


entwined, mouths broken

by hereticalvision



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Character Death, Cunnilingus, Dark, Deception, Detectives, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Infertility, Insecurity, Jealousy, Kylo Ren Angst, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Love/Hate, Masturbation, Murder, Obsession, Obsessive Behavior, Oral Sex, Peace is a lie, Please use condoms in real life, Police Brutality, Possessive Behavior, Race, Rey has issues, Rey-Centric, Rey/other - Freeform, Rough Sex, Self-Doubt, Serial Killers, Smut, They're both messed up, Unsafe Sex, Violence, background stormpilot, compulsive behaviour, drag queen Finn, noir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-16 08:30:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 25,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21504931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hereticalvision/pseuds/hereticalvision
Summary: Murder in the rough neighbourhood of Jakku brings Detective Kylo Ren into Rey Niima’s life. They share an immediate, irresistible, disturbing erotic connection which threatens to consume them both even as the body count is rising…A Reylo retelling ofIn the Cut.
Relationships: Cassian Andor & Rey, Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Kylo Ren/Rey, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 76
Kudos: 267





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fictionalist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fictionalist/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I try to tag all appropriate content warnings (please read the tags!) without spoiling upcoming twists. I do not warn about the endings of my stories. If that puts you off, no hard feelings. If it sounds good, join me in the handcart and let’s head off to hell.

so united, entwined,

mouths broken by love and soul bitten,

time will find us destroyed

― Federico García Lorca

It starts with ‘Do I know you?’ Rey blinking up at the large man sitting folded on her stairway, taking in his dark hair, sullen mouth, the strength in his hands as he reaches into his pocket.

‘Detective Ren,’ he says, holding a gold shield out to her. His voice is low and soft. ‘Are you Rey Niima?’

‘That’s me.’

‘A body was found nearby. I’m canvassing the building. Can I come in, ask you a few questions?’ Detective Ren stands then, his body unfolding upwards and upwards. He’s very tall, very broad. His eyes are deep and sad but the tension in his hands make Rey think of violence; her eyes flicker to where his jacket hangs open in the afternoon heat and she’s sure she can see his gun.

The sight of him standing above her sparks something. A few days ago Rey was walking home, sticking to the main streets, ignoring the alleys full of garbage and hiding places as usual; she no longer has to live that life. But a loud crash caught her attention as she walked past the alley by her favourite Vietnamese place. Her head whipped round before she made any conscious decision to look. It was just after five, still light, and she could clearly see the back of a broad man with black hair laying down a vicious beating on something behind a dumpster, something she couldn’t see. She hadn’t seen his face clearly but she’d seen his hair, the tip of his nose peeking out, his shoulders and arms in the same badly-fitting suit jacket she was seeing now, she’s almost certain. It’s too tight, pulling across his back. She could see the muscles in his arms. Her feet had stilled and she watched a moment, transfixed by the power of him. Then the thin red-headed man standing next to him, smoking, had met her eye and she’d hurried on, rushing home, trying not to think about it.

So this man is police? Figures. Rey eyes his biceps, shadow of his gun, his badge now hanging casually from his fingers. She jerks her chin. ‘How do I know that’s real?’

His voice is sharp when he says, ‘I can give you the number of my station. You can confirm my badge number with them.’

Rey takes out her phone, snaps a picture of the badge and number and brushes past him into her apartment. He doesn’t try to stop her, exactly, but she has to crowd past him and he doesn’t make it easy for her. He looms above her all barely restrained annoyance.

Rey isn’t sure exactly how much cooperation he was expecting in a neighbourhood like Jakku but fine. She goes to close the door but he turns to look at her and she reminds herself that if he’s telling the truth, he’s police and he could make her life difficult. If he’s lying then he’s probably an enforcer or something and he could still make her life difficult. She compromises by sliding the chain on and leaving the door ajar while she calls the station.

After several minutes on hold, with Ren clenching and unclenching his fists, staring at her through the gap between the door and the frame, she gives up and puts the phone down.

With another look at where she’s certain his holstered gun sits against his side, she lets him in.

Rey had a therapist a while ago. He was an ageing hippie who talked a lot about _anxious attachment_ and _triggers_. They spoke at length about her daddy issues, her abandonment issues and of course her weakness for bad boys.

The detective is looking around her tiny apartment now, eyes on the peeling yellow paint and her meagre belongings. A homemade orange doll. An old motorcycle helmet. A crystal.

Rey wonders if he can see her loneliness. Being in her home is a lot like being inside her head.

Ren indicates the helmet. ‘This yours?’

‘A friend’s.’ She doesn’t elaborate. Why should she tell him that she found it when she was a teenager and kept it, dreaming of the freedom of travel in a future after her family came back for her. Her fantasies were prosaic for a very long time. When she finally gave this fantasy up, the ones that replaced it were far more destructive.

‘When did you say you found this person?’ she asks now.

‘I didn’t,’ Ren says. ‘This morning. She was killed in the small hours of last night.’

‘She?’

Ren nods. ‘We don’t have a positive ID yet.’

Rey studies his face for a moment. Was the dead girl someone she knew, someone she’d passed in the street? But she asks, ‘How was she killed?’

The question startles him. ‘She was stabbed then disarticulated.’

Rey doesn’t quite know what that means and doesn’t like to ask. ‘Are you trying to identify her?’

‘Of course. But I’m not here to see if you can ID her, I’m here to find out if anyone heard or saw anything.’

‘Well, I don’t remember anything unusual from last night. And I sleep with the windows open.’

‘Do you do that a lot?’ He’s taking a notebook out of his pocket now, as though she’s going to give him some kind of useful statement.

‘When it’s warm.’ She shifts. ‘I like the air.’

‘Is that safe?’ Rey starts a little as the detective indicates her windows. ‘There’s a fire escape right there someone could access. And this isn’t the safest neighbourhood.’

‘I guess. I mean, it’s… sometimes things happen,’ Rey says with a shrug. ‘I don’t get much trouble. Most of the people around here know me.’

Ren steps towards her, right in her space. ‘But you asked how the girl was killed, not if we knew who she was.’ He stares at her, hard, for a long moment.

Rey forces herself not to squirm. He’s too big, too strong, too close, but there’s something else too, _it was him she saw, it was, she knows it…_

Abruptly, he jerks the notebook closed. Rey jumps. ‘If you remember anything, give me a call.’ He pulls his card from his notebook, hands it to her: Detective Kylo Ren, it says, with his number and email at the bottom. Rey wonders what kind of name that is, where this mountain of suppressed violence came from.

As Ren is leaving, he catches Rey’s gaze again and tilts his head, considering her. His gaze is no less intense but some quality in it has changed. He reaches out, almost touching her face; she stands still as any prey in the sights of its predator.

‘Do you sleep well, Miss Niima?’ he asks. ‘The deep sleep of the innocent?’

His fingers brush her cheekbone. In that split second, they are both surprised by the shock of feeling that passes between them – something in one another they recognise.

It is all Rey can do to stop herself from crying out; she looks away from his eyes, desperate. What on earth is happening to her? ‘No,’ she breathes and she doesn’t know if she’s answering the question or telling him to stop or begging him not to. She bites her lip hard. ‘Do you?’

His expression changes; he jerks his hand away from her and is gone in three strides.

Shocked, Rey stands by the closed door for a long time.

That night Rey touches herself, remembering the flare of feeling when Ren reached for her, his eyes burning into hers. She imagines him sitting in the chair by her bed, watching her with those eyes.

Don’t be afraid, he tells her. I feel it too.

Even in her own fantasy she can’t tell him that the fear is part of the point.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the comments and kudos so far! Hope you like the new chapter.

Rey sees Detective Ren again about a week later. She’s walking to the store; he is questioning someone on the street. Behind him, a white boy is buying dope from the Jamaicans.

Rey pretends not to see him, keeps her pace as she walks right past. But he sees her. ‘Miss Niima?’ His voice is louder than she remembered, harsher. Or maybe he was being soft with her before, even after she pissed him off.

She wonders what he wants now. ‘Hello Detective Ren.’

He dismisses whoever it was he’d been talking to with barely a wave of his hand then steps closer, towers over her. Too close again, not close enough. ‘You checked out my badge number, I heard.’

Rey doesn’t deny it. ‘I wanted to be sure you were who you said.’ What kind of enemy I might have made.

Ren nods. ‘A reasonable idea. I wondered if your accent is as real as my badge.’ Rey stiffens; has he run a check on her? Her visa isn’t exactly current. But that doesn’t seem to be where he’s going with this as he says only, ‘I like it.’

She swallows. She likes his voice, too. It’s deep and expensive like velvet and chocolate and silk. ‘Did you want to ask me something else?’

‘Just a few things.’ He indicates the car next to them. ‘Get in.’

Rey rears back. ‘Seriously?’ What does he want? She doesn’t know anything; he _knows_ she doesn’t know anything. Unless this isn’t about the girl at all.

Ren rolls his eyes. ‘I’m just trying to keep your business off the streets. I never think it’s a good idea to speak where people can listen.’ He opens the back door.

Rey swallows and gets in the car.

In the front seat there’s a head with red hair. Rey’s breath stutters.

Ren gets in the driver’s seat. ‘This is my partner, Hux.’

Hux raises one hand vaguely but barely turns, doesn’t look at her.

‘One of your neighbours heard screams in Vardos Alley in the night in question,’ Ren continues.

Rey shakes her head. ‘There are screams in Vardos Alley _every_ night, Detective.’

Hux looks then, meets her gaze in the mirror first then turns to her. If Rey wasn’t certain he was the man from the alley before, she is now. He looks pastier up close, like a man with a serious caffeine addiction who never sleeps. ‘We just wanted to check with you, to see if something jogged your memory.’

Rey lowers her eyes and thinks, really thinks. But nothing comes to her. It had been an ordinary night: she’d been exhausted after working late at the garage, got Vietnamese food on the way home, tried to sleep with the sounds of the streets in her ears while she pictured an ocean thousands of miles away. ‘I really don’t think so.’

Hux nods. ‘The reason we ask is because you stopped at the deceased’s place of work that night.’

‘What?’

‘The girl was identified as…’ Ren trails off, patting his pockets for his notes.

‘Oh my God, Rose?’ Rey blurts.

Ren shook his head. ‘No, a Paige Tico.’

Paige. Rey doesn’t know her as well as Rose. She’s not so talkative. ‘Rose must be devastated,’ she says.

‘Still don’t remember anything?’

‘No. I mean, I was in Tico’s to get food but it was about eight – still pretty early. Paige was on, I guess. I knew her to see but Rose is the chatty one. She said hi, but she was in and out on deliveries.’

Hux snorts. ‘There you are, Ren. Nothing. Why were you so sure the girl was all we needed?’

Ren ignores this and tries again: ‘The slightest detail could be helpful.’

Rey shakes her head again slowly, remembering only these two men beating someone in the alley right behind that restaurant.

Ren sighs. Hux looks away again. Rey leans forward, ready to try one last time to convince them that she doesn’t know anything. ‘Look, I–– are those crime scene photographs?’

Hux has them out on his lap, all blood and body parts. ‘I wouldn’t look,’ he tells her. ‘They’re rather graphic.’

Rey shakes a little as she moves back again. Ren is staring at her in the rear-view mirror when she raises her eyes.

Rey gets out of the car when Ren opens the door for her. She’s a little shaken. She’s seen the inside of Paige Tico now – that’s not something she ever wanted to be able to say.

‘Do you want to get a drink with me?’ Ren says, apropos nothing.

Rey blinks, the switch from death to date too sudden for her. ‘Now?’

‘I’m working now. Tonight.’

After everything Rey has seen and thought and felt, this is so… normal.

‘I don’t know,’ she says.

On the weekends, Rey meets Finn for coffee in the park. Her foster-brother. Her oldest friend. The first person who ever looked at her and thought she was worth keeping.

‘I saw Poe yesterday,’ he says.

Poe Dameron: hot like burning, oblivious like woah. ‘So you guys had a date, or…?’

Finn shoves her shoulder a little; she smiles. ‘Don’t tease,’ he says. ‘He still calls me “buddy”. Could there be more of a sign that he only sees me as a friend?’

‘It’s a pretty platonic nickname.’

‘It’s an aggressively platonic nickname. Even you wouldn’t call me “buddy”.’

‘Oh, are we winding ourselves up about how much he doesn’t fancy you this week? I think I preferred last week when you were winding yourself up about the signs he was madly in love with you.’

‘He gave me his jacket!’ Finn says, presenting his incontrovertible evidence for the tenth time.

Rey recites the facts: ‘He let you keep his jacket after he left it at the bar and you wore it home. And kept wearing it. Like a creeper.’

‘He said it looked good on me, didn't he? Doesn't that mean something?’

‘Men say all kinds of things, peanut. It doesn’t mean a damn thing.’

Finn screws up his face. ‘Bitterer than usual today?’

Rey shifts, uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry.’ She would never want to take his hope away from him. She touches his leg and offers, ‘Last night on the street I heard some guy shout, “I think you’re the one!”’

Finn raises his eyebrows, ‘And were you?’

‘Sorry to say, the one was a beautiful boy.’

Finn hums, pleased. ‘Well, everyone needs dick. Inside, outside, both.’

‘Thanks for that,’ Rey says. ‘You’ve got me picturing that porn we watched last time we did shots.’

‘The ancient and most noble art of group sex. Six cocks, no waiting.’ Finn sighs. ‘God, my dry spell is driving me mad. What I wouldn’t do to get a dick inside me.’

Rey thinks of what she might do to get Kylo Ren’s dick inside her. She shivers.

‘Ugh.’ Finn shakes his head, shakes away the demons and raises his face to hers. ‘Tell me something good?’

Rey fidgets a moment then says, ‘Somebody asked me out.’

‘Oh, that _is_ good. Who?’

‘A police detective. He's investigating a murder.’

Finn raises his eyebrows. ‘Scary. Is he hot?’

Rey laughs, awkward. ‘I mean. Yes. But.’

‘Cops make you nervous. I get that.’ Finn waves vaguely at his face, indicating his skin tone. ‘Remember that BS last month?’ Finn, dressed as Storm, had been stopped and frisked. It hadn’t gone bad, but one of the two officers had kept his hand on his gun the entire time and Finn had been shaken for days. ‘They can still be hot, I guess,’ he concludes, not one to let a bad experience shut down an avenue of sexual exploration. ‘And girl, you should go. Even just as practice. How else you gonna get a boyfriend? Cute boyfriend.’

‘He’s about a million miles from “cute”,’ Rey hedges. ‘Plus, I don’t want a boyfriend. I don’t think I even want any more friends.’

‘How about some fun? Remember fun?’

She rolls her eyes. ‘I have fun with you.’

‘Well, of course. I always bring the party. I’m kind of a big deal.’

Rey swats at him and he dodges, laughs, puts his arm around her.

‘Whatever,’ Finn says. ‘Go on the date. Then maybe one of us might get to be happy, for at least a little while.’

Ren told her he’d be at the bar on Kelvin Street at eight if she made up her mind. Rey still hasn’t even when she walks in wearing a pretty dove grey shirt dress, lower in the front than she usually favours even with all the buttons done up. One of her nicest.

Ren is leaning on the bar but straightens when he sees her. He doesn’t do anything as prosaic as smile of course. She’s yet to see him smile, wonders if it would make him more handsome or shatter her impression of him.

He doesn’t say anything as lame as ‘You came’ when she goes to stand next to him at the bar, either. He simply pulls out a stool for her and says, ‘What are you drinking?’

‘Whatever you’re having.’ Rey drinks shots with Finn when the goal is to obliterate whatever the latest crisis is but otherwise doesn’t have much experience with alcohol. She doesn’t much like bars, she never went to keggers in high school, she skipped college completely.

Ren raises an eyebrow a little at this but hands her a beer. It’s a taste she’s used to though not one she particularly enjoys. She sips from the bottle.

‘Do you do this a lot?’ she asks. ‘Drink with women you meet on cases?’

Ren shrugs. ‘The job isn’t as social as you might think.’

Not even slightly an answer.

‘You must get a lot of men asking to spend time with you.’

‘It happens.’ It hasn’t happened for a while though, not since Rey grew wise to the types of men she should avoid which she usually thinks is most of them.

She sips her beer. This is so awkward. A bolt of unexpected lust is one thing but a date with this strange man? What was she thinking?

When she looks up, Ren is staring at her again with those eyes, those beautiful, intense eyes. Taking in her utilitarian dress, perhaps. Noting that she wears no jewellery and the only note of whimsy about her is the spaceship charm hanging from her purse.

‘Listen,’ he says. ‘I can be whatever you want me to be. You want me to romance you, take you to a classy restaurant, I can do that. You want me to be your best friend who fucks you, I can do that.’

His straightforwardness is making Rey blush but hearing him say _fuck_ is also making her insides clench, her thighs rub together. There it is: she wants him.

‘Tell me what you want,’ he says, standing over where she sits on the barstool, predatory yet somehow vulnerable.

She digs her fingernails into her palm to stop herself from squealing or grabbing him or running – she doesn’t know which it would be. Instead, she stalls. ‘You aren’t going to tell me what I want?’ It’s a real question, though – if he means it, that would separate him from almost every other man Rey has ever met.

‘I want to hear it from you.’

Rey can’t look away from his burning gaze. She can feel it, she’s going to get lost in this man. It wouldn’t be so bad if she just wanted him to like her, but she thinks she wants to be like him.

She opens her mouth and his eyes drop to her lips…

Then he sees something behind her and straightens up, breaking the spell. ‘I thought you were finishing the paperwork?’

Rey turns to see Detective Hux behind her. His face is every bit as pinched as it was before, eyes red, mouth rigid with scorn.

‘And what work are you finishing?’ Hux replies, tone snide, eyes on Rey’s cleavage.

‘Don’t push me, Hux,’ Ren says, voice far colder than Rey has heard it before.

Rey glances quickly between the two.

Hux keeps sneering. His eyes take in the room. ‘You can stay here with the trash or you can come to the precinct. Captain’s been trying to call you.’

Rey does not like it when anyone intervenes on her behalf, being more than capable of standing up for herself in every conceivable situation. That said, it would have given her considerable satisfaction if Ren had told Hux to go fuck himself just then.

He doesn’t, too focused on the bit about his Captain; he scrambles for his phone, swearing. Rey feels a blush of shame crawl up her neck and turns her head slightly, afraid that one or the other of the men will see it. She doesn’t want either of them to know how hard that landed.

‘Shit. Fine.’ Then to Rey, ‘I gotta go. Need a ride?’

Hux makes a contemptuous sound in his throat. ‘You can’t drive if you’ve been drinking.’

‘I was thinking you’d drive,’ Ren says, challenging Hux with a long, hard stare.

Hux loses the battle of wills and does indeed drive Rey home in the backseat of their car, Ren sitting in the front, none of the three speaking on the way. Ren keeps looking at her in the rear-view mirror but Rey doesn’t know quite what to do with Hux sitting there. She couldn’t say why but where Ren elicits this sharp, fearful lust, Hux is repulsive and she wants only to get as far away from him as possible.

The car stops outside her apartment building and Rey climbs out with a mumbled thanks. Hux doesn’t even look at her, but Ren does. As she walks up the steps to her door she turns and some mad impulse has her meet Ren’s gaze full on and reach for the top button of her dress, which sits just above where her breasts begin. Ren’s throat moves restlessly as he stares at her, looking only at her eyes as she unbuttons the top button and, slowly, the one below.

Hux pulls the car away just then and Ren is jolted out of her view. Sense returns almost immediately and she clutches the top of her dress together as she hurries into her building. What was she going to do? Strip out here on the street?

If she thought Ren would like it enough, she’d touch herself for him right there. She can’t lie to herself about that.

Maybe she is trash, just like Hux said.

Rey is soaking wet when she gets through her apartment door and he still hasn’t even touched her and gods, what is _wrong_ with her, someone is dead and it feels as though from the moment she found out about that, she’s never felt more alive.

She wonders if Kylo feels the same way. She wonders if he fucks like a dead man coming back to life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos are appreciated, comments make my whole day :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone reading :) I made a playlist for this while I was writing it, you can check it out [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2pL1Uap7pGk0vht84uR0Mt?si=DzlRvYD8ScGtiEbdtsnD8g)

Rey touches herself again that night and again the next morning. It’s almost compulsive, the way she thinks about Ren. Not about fucking him. Just about him watching her.

Rey has never really liked other people touching her. She didn’t need her therapist to tell her it was because of her years and years of foster homes where no one reached out to her, at least not kindly. She’s never quite managed to let her guard down with the men who want to fuck her, even when she’s let them.

Ren wouldn’t settle for that. It’s in his face.

She imagines that voice again.

Your passion… It’s in there. And now you’ll give it to me.

Defiant even to her own fantasy she thinks, I’m not giving you anything.

The Ren who isn’t there sits back and watches her fingers.

We’ll see.

Rey has a long shift at the garage the next day. She needs all the hours Wedge can give her but the result is she keeps getting stuck with late shifts on Sunday, working for some of the more suspect customers. She can’t get a new job without a new visa, can’t get a visa extension without jumping through a whole lot of hoops and drawing attention to herself so here she is, working until nine on a Sunday night.

She passes Tico’s on the way home, of course. She always does. There are no lights on tonight. A hand written sign in the window says ‘Closed due to bereavement’ and there’s a plea for information from anyone who may have seen anything the night Paige was killed. Rey places her fingers on the glass. If she dies, there won’t be anywhere with a sign like this. Wedge will hire someone else the second she stops showing up for work – might think to check on her, might not. Finn would probably ask questions. Ren too, now. Who knows?

The sudden sound of a car alarm makes Rey jump and spin around. Nothing.

All at once, an arm clothed in a shiny black material wraps around Rey’s neck. A gloved hand covers her mouth and jerks her head back, pulling her throat taut.

The man moves, pushing Rey forward. Her feet drag on the ground. She can see a car ahead of them and the panic rises: he is not going to just take her money then? He is going to take her somewhere, take her somewhere and hurt her…

_No_.

Rey smashes her feet into the pavement and throws back her head into his face. The man grunts; she couldn’t be sure she’d connected properly but it was enough anyway to loosen his hold.

She twists to face him – to know for sure he’s real, not some figment conjured from her fears. She wants to see his face, see that he’s just another weak man trying to make himself feel big.

Instead she sees a creature in a mask.

Everything is black – clothes, gloves, mask. Even his eyes are covered.

He still has hold of her arm but Rey is angry now. Furious. She’s not a kid on the street any more, she’s not someone people can just mess with. She still has her purse, its mini can of pepper spray handy but it’s useless if his eyes are protected.

Instead she goes for his knee. Her attacker is startled into letting her go and Rey almost falls to the ground. She staggers a little but remains upright. Once she’s regained her balance she spins around, expecting the man to be coming for her again but there’s a taxi on the street now and she’s all but in front of it as it screeches to a halt.

The driver emerges and starts screaming at her but she barely hears it, too busy scanning the street wildly for the creature in the mask who is gone as if he was never there at all.

Rey practically runs home. It’s not fear exactly but the burst of adrenaline she felt during the fight – scuffle – carries her through the streets until she’s running up into her building, looking for the card he gave her and texting Ren.

He calls her back almost immediately. ‘I’ll be right there,’ he says. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ Rey replies through numb lips. ‘Hurry.’

She’s still in her overalls from work and she’s not sure if she should keep them on or change in case he needs them as evidence the way they sometimes do on TV. She takes them off in the end so that she can put on something lighter. It’s stuffy in the apartment again and she opens the window to sit by it, watching for Ren, jumping up and sitting back down again, waiting for her nerves to calm and to be able to find the centre of herself, the quiet place she retreats to when she needs to pull her strength to her.

He is there in ten minutes. ‘I was near here,’ he says.

He’s always near. ‘Do you want anything?’

‘What do you have to drink?’

Rey has tequila, her preferred shot of choice. She pours them one each. Ren winces as he swallows it.

‘Nasty?’ she asks.

‘More of a whisky guy.’ His voice is gentle. ‘Tell me what happened.’

She does, grateful not to be told off or interrogated or worst of all, fussed over. Ren listens without interrupting until she is finished then asks if she could tell anything about the attacker’s face through his mask. Could she look at pictures? Identify him?

Rey shakes her head and pours herself another shot.

Nodding to himself, Ren says, ‘Miss Niima—’

A laugh bursts from Rey’s throat. ‘I think we’re beyond that don’t you?’

He looks at her, dark eyes endlessly inscrutable. ‘Rey. It honestly sounds like a mugging. Just someone trying to take your purse.’

‘But then why did he—’

‘This neighbourhood, you said it yourself, things happen. You should be more careful. Walking home in the dark down Goazon Avenue, alone.’

‘I do it all the time!’

He shakes his head. ‘Then I’m amazed you’ve never been mugged before.’

Rey looks away. ‘Where was she killed?’

‘What?’

‘Paige. Where was she killed? On Goazon?’

‘We haven’t found the primary crime scene,’ Ren says. His eyes are searching her face. ‘There is no reason to think whoever killed her is the same person who attacked you.’

‘I know that.’ Her fingers tighten on the bottle.

Ren reaches out to her then, the way he did the first time he stood in her apartment, brushing his fingers over her cheekbone. ‘Take me through it again.’

His touch soothes her a little, or at least turns the jangling of her nerves in a different direction. He pulls her gently towards him. ‘He came from behind you?’

‘I don’t know.’ She should, though, it’s a simple question. All those years of living in survival mode and it turns out her brain doesn’t really work when she’s afraid.

‘He had his arm around my neck,’ she says. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Was it his right arm?’ Ren puts his arm around her neck. The heat of his body swallows her. ‘Or his left?’ His switches arms slowly, his fingers running down her side as he drops his right arm. Her nose and mouth fill with the warm musky scent of him and her mouth waters.

Rey shivers, her mouth impossibly dry. ‘His right.’

Kylo moves his right arm back around her throat, pulling her close. His arm is so long he could have placed it on her abdomen but instead he curves his hand around to caress the outside of her breast. Rey bites off a gasp.

He tugs her further into his arms, until her back is flush with his front. His fingers find her nipple. She can feel him at her back, getting hard.

Rey’s eyes fall closed. She sways back into him, the movement infinitesimal but a definite _yes_.

Kylo follows her into the bedroom, removing his clothes as they go. He places his gun carefully on her makeshift nightstand, has some trouble with his ankle holster. Rey watches him reveal himself. He is broad and muscled, as she thought. He has moles on his shoulders and scars on his abdomen. Rey is no doctor but it looks to her as though he was shot once and stabbed more than once. He doesn’t have tattoos; she’d wondered. His skin is paler than hers, the colour of someone who spends their days in shirts or indoors. Despite the flaws, the colour of him bestows an unblemished quality and she reaches out to trail her hand across his skin.

Kylo turns unsmiling to lie back on her bed, naked. He makes no move to touch her or himself even though he’s half hard. He just lies there, waiting for her to oblige him with some kind of show. It is so close to her fantasy that she wonders for a second if this is really happening.

He waits.

Hands shaking, Rey pulls her dress over her head. She feels a little self-conscious about her plain bra but she is wearing lace panties so she dispenses with the one quickly hoping he’ll focus on the other.

‘Take those off,’ he says.

‘No,’ she says at once, needing some bite of defiance.

At that he moves, his huge hands sliding down her hips and beneath her panties to slip them down her body. They fall to the floor and she stands naked before him. He palms her breasts and looks down at her sex. One of his hands goes into the small of her back and he pushes her unceremoniously past him, onto the bed face down. Before she can make a sound, his head is between her thighs, his hands opening her legs for his mouth. He pushes his face into her and eats her out like he’s desperate for her. He’s barely touching her except for his hands pulling open her thighs and his tongue slipping over her clit again and again. Rey buries her face in the sheets and moans, loving it, loving him, it feels so good. He keeps going and going the way other men have fucked Rey, as though it’s all for his own pleasure even though she isn’t touching him at all. His hands slip on her thighs, grab her ass. Fuck, it’s so good.

He pulls back just for a second to gasp for breath and Rey whines in protest.

‘Come all over me,’ he says.

Later, when Rey can’t sleep because of what had happened in the alley and because of the strangeness of a huge man in her bed, she gets up to fetch a glass of water and sips it in the cool air by her open window.

Kylo raises his head, looking at her from the next room. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

‘Isn’t there?’ A mugger, a murderer, the way you made me feel with just your tongue. Not even your cock.

He is silent for a moment.

She puts the water down and goes to him, sitting on the chair by the bed. ‘You ate me like you were starving.’

Kylo shrugs but the casual attitude is obviously forced. ‘I was.’ A hint of a smile crosses his face, the first Rey has seen there. ‘Your cunt tasted so sweet.’

It’s not a word Rey has heard often, particularly not directed at her. ‘My what?’

Kylo meets her gaze firmly. ‘Your cunt. Your cunt is so sweet. I knew it would be.’

She’s getting wet again and she needs it, slips her fingers down her naked stomach. She slides her folds apart so he can better see her middle finger dragging over her clit. ‘Tell me again.’

Kylo’s tongue traces his lips; she wonders if he can still taste her there. ‘You have the sweetest cunt I’ve ever eaten.’ Rey’s fingers speed up, she takes her other hand to her nipples and begins tugging methodically. ‘I want you to make yourself come and then I’m going to lick your fingers clean so I can taste you again.’ Rey keeps going, keeps stroking herself while Kylo describes the way she tasted, the way she smells, how sweet she was for him, how sweet. He’s touching himself now, too. His cock is enormous.

‘Do you want to fuck it?’ she begs.

‘Do you want me to?’

‘Yes. Please. Tell me you want to.’

‘Want to what?’ He tilts his head, still unsmiling but with something amused and sardonic in his gaze. ‘Fuck what?’

‘My…’ Rey gasps, she’s so close.

‘Your…?’ Teasing now but not playing, not exactly. ‘Say it,’ he orders.

‘My _cunt_ ,’ Rey wails at last and she falls apart, body clenching, legs going weak, brain shorting out. ‘Oh God.’

Kylo grabs her then and pulls her down onto him. ‘I want to fuck your sweet little cunt,’ he says, ‘Do you want that?’

‘Yes,’ she moans. No one has ever talked to Rey like this in her life and she’s still coming when he slips inside her. His cock is huge, she knew it when she saw it but to have it inside her all at once is overwhelming, such a high and he doesn’t give her time to adjust, just starts pounding her and she’s so full she can hardly bear it but never wants it to stop, not ever.

‘You’re still holding on. Let go,’ Kylo urges and Rey knows what he means and she does what he says and she comes again, so hard, so very hard she’s almost insensible when Kylo groans and pulls out of her to come hot and sticky all over her stomach.

After that, they lie together a while. Rey idly stokes her fingers down Kylo’s body until she finds one of his scars, traces it.

He pushes her hand away. ‘I don’t like that. Not if you touch it.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You didn’t know.’

‘I can still be sorry, even if it’s not my fault.’

Kylo captures her hand and raises it to his face, where a red scratch mark bisects his cheek. ‘Look what you did do.’

‘I did that?’ Rey doesn’t know how to feel.

‘When I fucked you. You don’t remember? It was that good?’

She touches it then, stroking it with her thumb, her fingers caressing the shell of his too-large ear. ‘Did this make it better?’

His eyes are enigmatic again, dark as always. ‘Yeah,’ he says.


	4. Chapter 4

Kylo dresses far more methodically than he undresses. He is languid now where he was urgent before. There is an alluring symmetry to the way he pulls on his clothes, as though he is meditating or balancing. Rey watches him cover his beautiful, hard body and wonders if she’ll see him again. She’s surprised by how much she wants to.

Rey idly wonders how many women have lain naked on their beds watching him prepare to leave. He’s done this a hundred times. A thousand. He’s a man who knows how to fuck even if he seems barely in control of himself when he does.

She slides her hand down her body again.

Kylo looks at her with hooded eyes. ‘I’ll never get out of here if you start.’

‘Are you in a hurry?’

‘I have to get back to work.’ He clips his holster to his belt. ‘My phone’s been blowing up this last hour.’

Rey’s hand stills. ‘Another dead woman?’

Kylo pauses a moment then nods. ‘Don’t ask me any more, we’ve got more work to do before we say anything.’

She shivers and goes to pull the sheet over herself. Kylo’s hand catches her wrist. His fingers go all the way around it like a cuff. ‘Don’t hide from me.’

‘I’m not.’

‘There’s still no reason to think this guy is the one who attacked you.’

She repeats her answer to this: ‘I know.’

Kylo’s thumb strokes the inside of her wrist. ‘Yeah. But take care of yourself, all right?’

That riles her. ‘I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time, thanks.’

Kylo snorts. ‘Right. Possible serial killer in the neighbourhood and you’re sleeping with the windows open and walking alone in the dead of night and beating guys who try to mug you.’

‘Your point?’

‘I don’t want anything to happen to you.’

Rey stares. She expects him to backpedal but he just looks at her, eyes all misery.

‘You don’t even know me,’ she says.

‘I do.’

‘Because we fucked?’

‘Because I do. Wouldn’t you say you know me?’

Rey considers. Shrugs. ‘I know everything I need to know about you.’

Kylo studies her for a long moment. ‘Ah, you do. You have that look in your eyes.’

He pulls on his jacket. And he leaves.

‘Baby girl got _laid_!’ Finn crows when she tells him the next day. ‘Tell me everything. Tell me about his dick.’

‘Bloody hell, Finn, I’m not telling you about his dick.’ Rey pauses. They’re at Finn’s apartment today, drinking and relaxing while Finn tries out new eye makeup. There’s no one to overhear her admit, ‘It was huge.’

‘Yeah?’ Finn pauses in applying his fake lashes. ‘Like straight girl huge?’

‘Like size queen porn star huge.’

Finn laughs, puts his arm around her. ‘Nice. Good for you.’

Rey swats at him. ‘That doesn’t automatically mean it was good, you know.’

‘So it wasn’t?’

She can’t help but smile. ‘No, it was. God, it was.’

Finn smiles and turns back to the mirror. ‘I think you like him.’

‘Why?’

‘You wouldn't be going gooey about the sex if you didn't like him.’

Rey snorts. ‘I’m going to make another batch of margaritas.’ She walks the three steps to the kitchen.

It’s her own fault, really, this bubbling happiness – she hasn’t told him about the mugging. As far as Finn knows, she texted the detective on impulse and they fucked all night. No wonder he’s so happy for her.

Finn calls, ‘There’s nothing wrong with liking someone.’

Rey retrieves the tequila. ‘I never like them, Finn.’

‘That’s not a good thing, you know?’

Rey does know. She sighs. When she looks up, Finn is gazing at her compassionately.

‘This guy’s different?’ he asks.

‘No. Yes. I don’t know.’ She does. ‘It’s never been this good before.’ She wouldn’t have said that if she’d been sober.

‘Lucky you.’

Desperate for a subject change, Rey asks, ‘No progress with Poe?’

‘He said he’d come and see the show this week.’

‘And you want to know if that means something?’

Finn shrugs. ‘If he does, it will.’

When Rey heads out a few hours later, tipsy, she runs into Finn’s neighbour Cassian Andor in the stair. ‘Hello, Rey,’ he says.

‘Hi Cassian,’ she replies, her tongue tying his name into a bit of a knot.

He laughs a little. ‘I see you and Finn are up to your usual tricks.’

‘Trying to relax. Did you hear about Paige Tico?’

He nods, sombre. ‘Poor girl. And now the cops are crawling all over the neighbourhood, making everything worse. DJ took a beating. Baze is moving his pitch. We’re all watching our backs.’

Cassian makes money partly by translation from Spanish, but he also sells guns. He’s an odd mixture of intellect and pragmatism, but despite knowing he was in the cartels once upon a time, Rey has always found him quiet and non-threatening. Most everyone in the neighbourhood makes their living illegally one way or another; the police poking around will cause more harm than good, she knows. But.

‘Be careful,’ she says.

‘You too. If the rumours are right, you’re more the killer’s type than me. How you getting home?’

‘It’s still light.’

‘You’re already drunk. So I’m guessing Finn is too. I’ll walk you?’

Rey would argue but she’s tired and besides, she rather likes Cassian. She shrugs.

‘Any new translations?’ she asks as they fall into step.

‘I’m working on some poetry,’ he replies. ‘Garcia Lorca. _Sonetos del Amor Oscuro._ ’

Rey’s Spanish is patchy. ‘Sonnets of Love something?’

‘Dark Love. Very erotic.’

She raises her eyebrows. ‘You’ll have to let me see some then.’

He laughs.

Cassian walks her the ten blocks back to her own apartment, telling her all about the poet as they go. Rey never had much luck with education so the bits and pieces Cassian tells her about literature are precious. She loves the way he thinks about words, the questions he puts to her. What is more effective in English – _mouths bruised_ or _mouths broken._ _Ruined_ or _destroyed_.

As they near her building, Cassian quiets. ‘Don't look out there, because someone is watching you.’

‘What?’ Rey is not foolish enough to turn at once to see who Cassian means. It is better to seem aware but not afraid.

‘One of the cops.’

Rey’s breath quickens at once.

‘Miss Niima?’ That voice – not Kylo, it’s Hux.

‘Shit,’ Rey breathes.

Cassian frowns. ‘You all right?’

‘I’ll be fine – you’d better go. This one’s a real dickhead.’

Cassian’s eyes dart between Rey and Hux but he accepts her at her word and takes off.

Rey turns. ‘Detective Hux. How unexpected.’ He’s finishing a cigarette, grinds it under his shoe as she watches.

‘I’d like to apologise for the other night at the bar,’ Hux says smoothly. ‘I was a little rude. I think you may have got the wrong impression of me.’

‘No,’ Rey says.

Hux looks at her a moment and nods sharply, either understanding exactly what she just said or not understanding her at all, Rey isn’t sure.

‘That was really all. Ren told me you were mugged yesterday. How are you?’

He seems sincere, but Rey is still wary. ‘Shaken, I guess. Trying to take my mind off it.’ She tilts her head, hating herself for even asking but, ‘Did Ren ask you to check on me?’ She is very careful to call him _Ren_ , she can sense a mile off that Hux knowing about them would be bad for her.

Still, Hux smirks a little as he tells her, ‘No. No, I’m here on an unrelated matter.’

Rey snorts. ‘There seem to be a lot of _unrelated matters_ around here lately.’

‘It’s a rough neighbourhood. But then, you knew that.’ He pulls his phone from his pocket and holds it up for her. ‘Do you recognise this woman?’

Rey looks at the photograph. Older, rail-thin, hair dyed glorious purple. ‘I don’t think so. I’d remember that hair.’

Hux hums to himself and makes a note.

Rey can’t help herself. ‘Is she dead like Paige? Was it the same guy?’

Hux reaches out; Rey forces herself not to flinch from his touch. He puts his hand on her arm. Is it supposed to be reassuring? ‘I’m sure this is very stressful for you. But, Miss Niima, it happens every day.’

‘What does?’

Hux’s gaze levels with hers. ‘Murder.’

Kylo doesn’t call her for another day and when he does, he is all business.

‘Can you come down to the station to look at some pictures?’

‘What for?’ Rey closes her book, a loan from Cassian, and curls her feet under herself on the chair. ‘I told you I didn’t see his face.’

‘Just to make sure.’

Rey shakes her head. ‘I can try. But it’s all jumbled now, like a dream.’

‘It’s in you somewhere.’

I wish you were in me somewhere. Rey rolls her eyes at herself even as she looks over to her bed and remembers.

‘What about tomorrow?’ he goes on.

Rey isn’t sure what he’s asking. ‘Tomorrow?’

‘At the station,’ he says patiently.

‘I have work. I suppose I could come in after. Is this about the woman with the purple hair?’

That catches him off guard. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Your friend.’

‘My friend?’

‘The man with the red hair.’

He snorts. ‘My partner. You mean my partner.’

‘He was here yesterday.’

‘Was he,’ Kylo says, low and threatening.

Rey likes the idea of two men falling out over her; she likes the idea that she’d be worth enough to be fought over even as the independent part of her decries this need. Her hand tightens on the phone.

‘Don’t you want to come over tonight and ask me more questions?’ she says all at once, her voice breathy, needy.

‘I can’t,’ he says at once, not even thinking about it. ‘I’ve got a C.C., the clean up’s going to take most of the night.’

The rejection stings more than Rey would have expected. ‘What’s a C.C.?’

‘Drug deal gone bad.’ Rey sighs. Maybe it is a real reason after all. Maybe she should let him go.

Then he says, ‘Are you alone?’

She starts. ‘What?’

‘Sit down. Are you sitting?’ His voice has taken on that hypnotic, commanding tone he’d used when ordering her to come for him.

‘Yes,’ she says.

‘Good. Put your hand between your legs. Inside your panties. Are you doing it?’

Rey squirms. She’s in her pyjamas, so it’s easy enough to touch herself and she’s not about to disabuse him of the idea that she sits around in her sexy lace when she’s home alone. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes.’

Kylo keeps talking. ‘Touch that sweet cunt that I like.’

That word gets her going again.

‘And you slip your middle finger in. It's deep. It's soaking wet. You run your finger up, and your clit's right there. It comes to meet you.’

It does.

‘Stroke it for me.’

She does.

‘Come for me. Let me hear you.’

She does.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there readers :) Holiday weekend knocked my schedule a bit, hope you like the new chapter! Please note there is one instance of a racial slur.

Another day, another dollar. Rey was never very good at school but she’s brilliant at taking things apart and putting them back together again. The work day goes as well as it ever does – busy, dirty, loud. Snap goes out to get lunch for everyone and Rey eats a meatball sub, the first hot food she’s bothered with in a while. She’s been living on Cheez-Its and apples.

She goes home to shower and change before she goes to the station. Sue her, she wants to put on clean underwear and something not covered in grease stains.

When she gets to the precinct, she reflects that grease and dirt would have fit right in after all. The paint job was older and shabbier even than her crappy apartment. After the officer at the desk waved her through, there is a noticeboard with Police Activity League sign ups and a poster for the Sensitivity Training which someone has defaced. Rey is amazed there aren’t dicks drawn on every surface, honestly.

She follows the signs to the office marked Homicide Squad. Just inside the door is a low fence with a swinging gate, the kind she’s seen on television. The centre of the room is filled with a row of desks. In one corner is a room with a sign on the door reading ‘Captain Snoke’. In the other corner is a room with a glass wall where a bunch of men are eating pizza and evidently ribbing one another if the bursts of laughter are anything to go by. She can hear snatches of conversation and although she wouldn’t swear to it, she’s convinced she hears someone say ‘spic’.

She stares from the fence into the room for a moment until Kylo emerges from out of her view. He looks as stern as ever, not joining in the good-natured laughter. Startling the effect he has on her even from across the room.

Her hand tightens on the strap of her purse and it’s then she notices that the charm Finn gave her for her birthday – a silly thing shaped like a spaceship – is gone. It had been hanging from her bag for over a year. She tries to think when she last saw it before realising that it must have come off in the struggle.

It hurts because it was from Finn, because that masked creature had taken something that meant something to her. Logically she knows it’s nowhere near as bad as it could have been but it makes her angry all over again.

Kylo distracts her from her thoughts by appearing in front of her all at once; she’d taken her eyes off him and he’d approached like a predator.

‘How are you doing?’ he asks in his velvet voice.

‘I’m fine,’ she says. She’s still twisting the strap of her bag in her hands.

‘Why do I think you always say that?’

Rey shrugs. ‘It’s what I’m supposed to say. Would you like me to tell you that I honestly have no idea?’

‘Yes,’ he replies. It surprises her.

‘Miss Niima,’ says Hux, smoothly sliding into view. ‘Won’t you come in?’

Rey looks between the two men. Kylo is blocking the gate and Hux clearly sees this as he beckons her through it. He’s always playing with them. Rey thinks he knows, maybe not all of it but definitely something. He’s caught some undercurrent.

‘Ren!’ someone shouts from what she takes to be the break room. ‘Your Lean Cuisine is ready.’ There’s a snigger in the tone.

Kylo swears and walks back to the break room without another word.

Hux snorts. ‘Heaven forbid anyone think Ren isn’t pure keto paleo.’ He opens the gate by way of invitation. ‘It’s nice to see you again.’

‘Mm,’ Rey says in lieu of insincerity.

‘And you’re here about…?’

Maybe that’s why he seems amused. Maybe he thinks she’s just here following Kylo around. Which… well.

‘Ren asked me to come and look at pictures.’

This seems to catch Hux off-guard. ‘Pictures?’

‘Because of the mugging.’

‘Oh, mugshots. No problem.’ Hux indicates a desk, presumably his, and she takes a seat while he sorts through a pile of belligerently tidy folders. It’s funny how neat it is compared to the rumpled state he always seems to be in. ‘I thought Ren said you didn’t see his face?’

‘He was wearing a mask.’

‘So why is Ren making you look at pictures?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe he thinks I’ll recognise someone from around or something.’ Maybe it was an excuse to get her here. But no, Kylo wouldn’t need an excuse. She’s been pretty clear with him.

‘Is Hux bothering you?’ Kylo is back. He didn’t bring his Lean Cuisine or whatever. ‘Telling you about the mutants living under the subway?’

‘I was telling her about the time the dog ate some critical evidence in the Rabbi’s murder,’ Hux says smoothly.

‘Is that so?’ Kylo says, frowning, looming. Rey can tell she won’t be hearing any of Hux’s stories.

Hux hands her the stack of folders and Rey opens the top one, flicks through it.

‘I’d like to talk to your workmates,’ Kylo says suddenly.

‘None of them were there. I was alone.’

‘Maybe someone saw someone hanging around.’

Rey snorts. ‘If they had they would have chased him off with a spanner and bragged about it to the whole garage.’

Hux, behind her, laughs. ‘She’s smarter than you, Ren.’

Kylo scowls. To be fair, that seems to be his demeanour all the time except when they are alone together.

Rey continues to look at pictures to show willing. Some of them she does recognise, as it happens, but if any of them are killing women or mugging people, she’s in the kind of trouble she’s not getting out of.

‘Ren?’ An Amazon of a woman with ice in her blue eyes and blonde hair calls him. ‘Captain wants you.’

Kylo mutters something and leaves her alone with Hux.

She doesn’t want to have to make conversation but the silence stretches. ‘Is it always this busy?’

‘This is a slow night.’

‘What does C.C. stand for?’

Hux is watching her keenly. ‘Heard that from Ren, did you?’ Rey doesn’t answer. Hux shrugs, seems to relent. ‘It stands for condition corrected. It’s what Ren calls it when a murderer or dealer gets killed.’

Rey processes that for a moment. She knows people whose deaths Ren would probably look at that way. She likes some of them.

Hux indicates the photographs. ‘Recognise anyone?’

DJ is in there. Jano Bix, the leader of that biker gang who wear long bandanas so the ends flap like tails from the back of their heads. Cassian Andor.

Rey closes the book firmly. ‘No one from either of the nights we’re talking about.’

Hux nods. ‘I knew it was a waste of time.’ Rey hands him the folders and as he takes them with his right hand he catches her fingers with his left. ‘Have you had dinner?’

This, Rey did not expect.

‘I’m about to finish if you’d like to get out of here.’

Rey is spared from answering by Kylo’s reappearance. Whatever the captain said to him has made him even angrier. He looks right at Hux and says, ‘When did you start liking women?’

Rey flinches a little.

Hux doesn’t. ‘About the same time as you.’ His eyes narrow. ‘Careful, Ren, that your personal interests not interfere with orders from Captain Snoke.’ He walks away.

Rey is embarrassed – for what happened, for what Kylo said.

‘My brother is gay,’ she says.

‘It wasn’t a gay crack,’ Kylo replies but he doesn’t say anything else as he sits down at his own desk.

Rey doesn’t know what to say either so tries for small talk. ‘Is that your father?’ she says, indicating a picture on his desk.

‘My grandfather,’ Kylo says.

‘Are you close with him?’

‘He died before I was born. But he was a hell of a cop.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Kylo shrugs. ‘If we’re talking about this, my father was a drunk and a gambler and he’s been dead five years. My mother is a workaholic who spent all the years of their marriage pushing him away and then went to pieces when he died.’

Just like that, Rey has fallen down a rabbit hole.

‘Do you see your mother at least?’ she asks, scrambling.

‘My mother.’ There’s scorn in the voice. ‘When I was thirteen my mother left me in Geneva. She was called away to Washington for five days. She said later that it never occurred to her that I wouldn't be all right. My dad said that I failed to take advantage of the situation. That I should have ordered hundreds of boxes of chocolate, that I should have gone skiing.’ Kylo’s voice was practically a snarl but it was quiet, pitched so that only she could hear him. ‘Neither of them got it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she says again. Before it was a reflex – now she means it, feels for him. She’s spent so long dreaming of any kind of mother that the idea of having one she doesn’t want to talk to is anathema. What kind of person must this woman be, to leave her son behind like that? That can’t even be the worst of it, not if Kylo cut her out of his life. Rey used to think she’d forgive her parents anything if they’d just come back for her.

Kylo’s deep dark eyes meet hers. ‘It’s too fucking busy in here.’

He leads her to a bathroom down the hall. Rey is certain Hux is watching them until they are out of his sight.

Kylo crowds her into a bathroom with only one stall, locks the door behind him. ‘You’re under arrest,’ he says, crowding into her.

A frisson of fear spices lancing arousal. ‘What did I do, detective?’

‘Don’t you know?’

He spins her around and bends her over the sink, yanking her skirt up around her waist. He pulls aside her panties, the nice ones she put on just for him but she might stop bothering, he never seems to notice, too busy reaching for the _cunt_ beneath. He rubs a finger along her slit, finds her wet, pushes his fingers inside her.

‘What are you doing?’ she asks, breathy and light, playing her part, all ignorant ingenue. It’s not the first time she’s pretended in order to get what she wants but all at once she wants far more than ever. Rey wants him to unseal her, fix her, hold her down and open her up. She wants him to sate at last the old longing from childhood to be chosen, pursued, consumed.

A belt buckle bounces against the sink even as Kylo grabs her head, pulling her face up to look at him in the mirror over the sink. ‘Let go,’ he says and pushes his cock inside her.

Rey wasn’t completely ready and the length of him pinches. He can’t keep himself still, though to his credit the thrusts do remain shallow while he plays with her clit, until it gets good, until she’s soaking, until she says, ‘Fuck me.’

He holds her tightly by the hips and rolls his own, fast and deep inside her. When she closes her eyes, he hisses at her until she opens them again and looks at him. He likes watching her face, watching her react to him. And oh, she reacts, gasping and sweating, tears forming in the corner of her eyes as she pushes back against him as best she can on every thrust. Sweat is pooling on her back beneath her bunched-up dress, she can feel it soaking into the cotton. Kylo’s breath is loud and hot in her ear, the tang of whatever he’d been eating catching in her nose as he gasps. The feel of him inside her, the perfect pleasurable pain makes her want to cry or beg; she settles for moaning, forgetting the corridor right outside, not thinking of how far the sound must travel. She could die happy right here on Kylo’s cock.

When they’re finished, when Kylo has come with a howl and rubbed Rey’s clit until she’s sobbing, there’s a stain on the wall where he pulled out before he came. Rey pulls out a couple of paper towels to wipe it away; Kylo catches her wrist in his hand.

‘Leave it,’ he says. ‘Maybe the detectives will figure it out.’


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is more sexy time and some revelations...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the first section there's discussion of gynaecological issues and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it suggestion of past child sexual abuse. To skip all that, skip the first section and start at 'The clinic is their first date.'

It’s the third time they fuck when Kylo says what Rey’s been wondering when he was going to say: ‘Are you on birth control?’

They are naked on Rey’s bed, lying together but not touching. Not cuddling. Rey doesn’t like to, it blurs things.

She rolls her eyes. ‘Bit late to be worrying about that, don’t you think?’

‘I’ve been pulling out,’ he says, defensive. Rey’s sex ed wasn’t up to much but it was good enough for her to know that’s not exactly fool proof.

She snorts. ‘Yeah, well. The short answer is no.’

This seems to take Kylo aback.

‘Don’t worry,’ she says, smirking at him. ‘I can’t get pregnant. And by now you’ve got whatever I might have, so...’

‘You can’t get pregnant?’ Kylo rolls towards her then, places his hand over her abdomen.

Rey shrugs. ‘I have a unicorn uterus.’

‘Be serious.’

‘I am. It’s called something like that, anyway. It’s only half there. So I could get pregnant, I guess. It’s just that the odds of it happening and then me carrying it to term are really, really small.’ She shrugs. ‘I found out back in Britain. You know they just let anyone go to the doctor there? You don’t even really have to pay for it.’

‘So they gave a teenage girl an invasive pelvic exam?’ He is not stupid.

She tenses right up. ‘Kylo, do you really want to hear my sad stories?’

Kylo’s eyes on her are as expressive as ever. They swim with what she thinks is pain for her. ‘Is it so odd? To have someone ask you something real?’

‘I can’t say it happens that often,’ Rey says. ‘Do you want to start using condoms?’

He huffs a little. Weirdly she can tell he’s more annoyed at the shift in topic than the idea of condoms. She wonders why he’s so desperate for her to open up. ‘I’m clean. You?’

‘Far as I know.’

‘I’ll take you to a clinic.’

‘What?’

‘“Far as I know” isn’t good enough for me to fuck you the way I want.’

That phrasing doesn’t exactly endear him to Rey. ‘You know, I remember every guy I ever slept with by how he liked to do it,’ she says suddenly. ‘Not how I wanted to do it.’

‘That should be criminal,’ says Kylo. ‘Look at you.’ He runs his hand up from her abdomen, between her breasts to cover her throat, bring her jaw up so he can kiss her. He’s so good at that.

Rey hums as he pulls back. ‘Sometimes I think maybe it’s normal. Other times I think it's just me. I mean, are other women able to say: "pinch my nipples, bend over, suck my dick"?’

‘Probably not "suck my dick”.’

Rey’s laugh bursts from her half wild. Kylo’s eyes dance at the sound. ‘Let me do this for you,’ he says and it sounds like a command. ‘And I’ll fuck you any way you want.

Because she does want to know if it gets less inhibited even than this, because she wants to know how deep they can go together, she says all right.

The clinic is their first date, she supposes. There’s paperwork and money changes hands and there’s a lot of dancing around the urge to touch. Then they both have a clean bill of health and they go back to Rey’s. There, Kylo pushes her knees to her shoulders as he fucks her until she is nothing but a mindless, pleading thing who would do anything, anything at all in the world so long as he _doesn’t stop_.

Rey is sure she used to have more of a life than this. She always worked a lot, fine, but she used to go to movies when she had the money. Used to spend her weekends thrifting, looking for the perfect beautiful dress for Finn’s alter ego, Storm d’Vine, or something for Rey herself maybe so she could try another dreadful Tinder date. That part she doesn’t miss so much. Sometimes she’d be invited to hang out with her co-workers, and if there would be food she would go.

Most of that has fallen by the wayside and now what she does is fuck Kylo.

Here are the things she has noticed:

They never go to his place. He tells her he has a terrible roommate. She wonders if he’s hiding a wife and kids. That kind of thing would bother her, a little, but she doesn’t really believe it. Surely a family man wouldn’t be so pent up all the time? Nor would he be available at all hours to lick her cunt all over the neighbourhood.

He doesn’t talk about his parents after the first time. Rey wondered why he’d said anything at all in the precinct. It’s in her nature to think families should be together but any time she’s attempted to reopen the subject, she’s been stonewalled. And, all right, he’s really just asking her to respect the boundaries of this arrangement or whatever she should call it, and she’d respect that except…

‘Will you tell me about your friend with the helmet now?’

Rey has no idea what he’s talking about.

‘That first day, you said the helmet belonged to a friend.’

‘I lied.’

Kylo waits for her to speak. He always leaves an expectant silence when she doesn’t want to talk. He must be a hell of an interrogator.

‘I found it in the trash,’ she says.

His eyes soften in that expression which is not a smile, but as close as he ever gets.

‘What?’ she says.

‘You’re a scavenger,’ he says.

‘I’m a survivor,’ she says.

‘What have you needed to survive?’

Rey absolutely doesn’t want to go there. ‘Too much,’ she says. Then, ‘Too much talking,’ and she saves herself from having to say anything else by filling her mouth with his cock. It’s soft but she sucks it hard then sucks it hot and Kylo pulls her hair at first as though trying to get her to stop but eventually he groans and gives in and fucks her face until her throat burns.

Maybe she’s pushed him away too hard, she thinks, the time he seems distracted even when she’s rubbing herself against him dressed only in her underwear. So she asks, ‘What is it?’

‘Work,’ Kylo says, shaking his head. ‘Sorry. I’m just… thinking about that guy.’

Rey sits back on her haunches from where she’s been straddling him. ‘Then I’m definitely doing something wrong.’

He huffs a laugh. ‘The murderer I mean. These killings, they’re so… precise. He’s so methodical. So why is he leaving the bodies where we can find them? It’s got to be a taunt.’

Rey climbs off him then, sits next to him on the bed instead. She picks at the cheap polycotton – she needs to wash these. ‘All right, so he’s ice cold and clever. And arrogant.’

‘Yeah. But it’s more than that. I feel like there’s something I’m just not putting together, something…’ He sighs, frustrated. Runs a hand through his hair. ‘I don’t know.’

Rey nods. ‘How does he choose his victims?’

‘Other than they’re both women and rather attractive? They have nothing in common that we can find. Different ages, different ethnicities, different occupations.’

‘So he just likes to hurt women?’ Rey thinks about that for a moment. What would it be like to be a target for that, to know with certainty you’re about to be annihilated? Her hand trails absently over her throat. ‘There’s a lot of that about.’

Kylo looks at her sharply. ‘What are you saying?’

He’s doing that thing again. Testing her.

‘I’m saying there are some real pieces of work out there,’ she evades. ‘People who like to hurt people. People who lash out.’

‘This guy doesn’t lash out. He’s probably got spreadsheets planning his moves months ahead.’

‘Well that would be useful evidence. His spreadsheet.’

Kylo’s bark of laughter is surprised out of him. Rey likes it. She’s startled how much. It feels like something rare and precious, something more human from him than his salty flesh against hers. She worries her lip.

‘Will you fuck me now?’ she says, leaning forward to undo her bra, tossing it one side. She doesn’t have much up top but Kylo loves putting his mouth on what she does. ‘Can you think of me and fuck me?’

Kylo’s beautiful dark eyes look straight at her and he hauls her back into his lap. He mouths at her tit and she gasps, runs her fingers through his hair, tugs a little.

‘I can’t _stop_ thinking about you,’ he says against her skin and Rey shudders as his nails bite into her back.

So yeah, he keeps prying and they keep fucking and there are no new leads on her mugging or the murders but everything is jumbling together, divided only into the times when Kylo is touching her and the times when he isn’t.

Without her quite knowing how it happened, Rey’s life is starting to slip out of her control.

If the clinic was their first date, Rey supposes this is their second: Kylo shows up with his car and says, ‘Let’s go somewhere,’ and they’re off.

She texts Finn quickly out of habit, just so the one person who might care will know where she went if she doesn’t come back. But it’s calming, Kylo focused on the road, classic rock on the radio, Rey’s skin soaking up the sun. She’s wearing a sleeveless shirt and a denim skirt and even Kylo has abandoned his black on black look for something in a pale grey, more fitting for the weather.

Jakku is in the desert, and Kylo is driving them out into it. They’re only about twenty minutes out of the city when he turns off the freeway down a road that’s barely even a track.

Visions of vultures feasting on her flesh fill Rey’s fanciful mind. ‘Are we going to a nice ditch you happen to know?’

Kylo turns sunglasses-covered eyes to her. ‘You’ll see.’

He stops at a spot like any other; she has no idea how he chose it. ‘We’re here,’ he says and steps out of the car.

Rey follows suit and looks around. It’s not exactly a beauty spot or anything. There are… desert-like sights. Sand. Dunes. Rocks. Spiky plants.

‘This is a weird place for—’ She stops when suddenly Kylo pulls his gun from its holster; Rey startles back at once, raising her hands in a placating gesture.

He doesn’t seem to notice, and holds it out to her. ‘Go on, try it.’

Rey blinks her surprise. ‘You want me to shoot your gun?’

He nods, expectant.

‘I'm frightened of guns,’ Rey demurs. She’d never even seen a handgun until she came to the US. So violent. So American. There’s something alluring about it.

‘So learn to use one.’ He gestures with the hand holding the thing. ‘Go on.’

She takes it, of course. There are more bits than she expected – more buttons and things. She frowns at it. ‘How do you hold this thing? Do you...?’

Kylo is still moving around, setting things up.

She tries out a few poses she’s seen in movies. ‘One hand or two?’

Now he is pulling a wooden crate from the car. He paces away from Rey and she realises that he’s setting up a target for her using old beer bottles. ‘Hold it any way you want,’ he calls to her. ‘Just don't hold it _this_ way.’

She flicks a switch back and forth, pushes a button and the clip of bullets comes out into her hand.

Kylo tuts at her when he’s finished setting up. He puts his gun back together smoothly and says, ‘All right, let’s try this.’ He starts adjusting her. ‘Square up to target. You have to hold it with two hands, one cradling the other.’

It reminds Rey more of a date than she would have expected, the kind she’d had in her teenage years when boys were constantly trying to impress her by showing off. But Kylo seems to be actually sharing. Rey’s surprised at how exciting it is.

When she fires the gun for the first time he laughs, the first time she’s heard that sound from him. Two firsts at once.

‘Not bad,’ he says. ‘Try aiming this time.’

By the time they’ve done this through a few times, Rey’s blood is singing. She feels strong and powerful and… wet. Yeah, she’s wet.

Kylo has noticed. ‘This turning you on?’

Rey nods at him almost shyly.

‘They wouldn’t let you become a cop, reacting like that to shooting a gun.’

‘So it doesn’t get you hard?’ Where is this coming from, Rey wonders. It’s as if something wild inside her, something that has always been there, is suddenly awake.

Kylo doesn’t seem offended by the weird question. ‘I mean, sometimes I guess.’

‘How about beating on a suspect?’

That catches him off guard. ‘Did Hux say something to you?’

‘Why?’ Rey tilts her head, daring him to tell her.

He shakes his head. ‘Just, he’s an asshole. You can get hauled up for something like that.’

The answer is a little disappointing. She’s shocked at how much she wants to hear about it.

The dampness between her legs still needs attention. She turns to him thoughtfully, gun still in her hand. ‘So what if I pointed it at you?’

Kylo frowns. ‘Maybe I should have started with gun safety. Don’t point a gun at anyone you don’t want to shoot.’

Rey wants to tell him that he’s spoiling this for her but instead she slips on the safety so that he can see and hear her doing it and points the gun at him. ‘What if I pointed a gun at you and told you to go down on me or I’d shoot you?’

‘I’d tell you that was a waste of a good threat because I’ll eat your sweet cunt any time you want.’

He takes her breath away with his straightforwardness sometimes. Rey lets her hand fall to by her side.

‘Put the gun down,’ Kylo says and she gently rests it by her feet. ‘If you don’t want coarse, rough sand in your vagina, you’ll get in the car and slip your panties off.’

Rey is trembling with anticipation already and he hasn’t even touched her. What this man does to her. She moves past him to the back door of the car and opens it. She’s barely inside before he’s crowding into her, grabbing her from behind, cupping her tits in his hands.

‘Did you really think you’d just point my own gun at me?’ he snarls into her ear.

‘You’re the fool who gave it to me,’ she returns, writhing back against him as best she can in the confines of the car. He’s massive enough that they’re pressed right against each other; his back must be against the ceiling. ‘You’re practically begging for it.’

Kylo snarls again and his hands twist her breasts almost cruelly. ‘Is that what you want? A fight?’

Again she turns it around on him. ‘You brought me here to show me how to use weapons.’

‘You want me because I’m dangerous,’ he hisses as he rolls up her denim skirt. Rey’s hand has snaked down to touch her clit and he angrily bats it away. ‘Right?’

‘Look who’s talking,’ she spits right back and she’d rubbing herself on his hard cock and he doesn’t take his clothes off, just unzips and starts fucking her. He catches the hair at the nape of her neck in his hand and tugs it as he pounds into her. She slaps at his huge thigh, behind her, and she moans and curses him and moans again. It’s so good.

Kylo comes with a gasp and fumbles for her clit but Rey’s already put her fingers back on herself and it doesn’t take her long to follow him to the heights. They slump sweaty into the car seat, still joined until Kylo starts that ritual of reclamation men go through after sex – putting the cock away, straightening up, reminding them that they are adults and civilised and they can’t always let that animal side show.

‘Big yes on the guns,’ she gasps.

Kylo doesn’t speak.

‘Are you upset?’

‘You pointed the gun at me, Rey. Even after I told you it was dangerous.’

Rey swallows, still trying to catch her breath. ‘I was playing.’

‘You could have shot me.’

The words ring out for a long moment. Rey feels self-conscious all at once and straightens her clothes.

Kylo looks her in the eyes. ‘Do you want to kill me? Is that what this is?’

‘What? No! Kylo, how can you even say that?’

‘I don’t… I just…’ he rakes his hand through his hair. ‘I can’t read your mind, all right? And you pointed it at me when I wanted you to know you could point it at anyone in the world and I’d have your back.’

That was not where Rey had thought this was going. ‘What?’

‘I’d kill anyone who hurt you,’ he says. ‘I could kill anyone who ever did.’

‘You’re so dramatic,’ she says, trying condescension to distance herself from his words.

‘Don’t do that. I mean it.’ His eyes are ablaze all at once. ‘The things you’re not saying… I can see they’re still hurting you. Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. That's the only way to become what you were meant to be.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she whispers, terribly afraid that she does.

‘Don’t you?’

He’s scaring her now. Not in the sexy way she’s grown used to – he’s really scaring her.

She looks at him, all big brown eyes. ‘Who did you kill?’

Kylo looks right back at her. ‘My father. Who did you?’


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is panic and angst.

‘You killed your father?’

Kylo shakes his head, angry. ‘We’ve covered that, Rey. Who did _you_ kill?’

‘I…’ Rey can’t begin to process the enormity of this. ‘Your father? How could you… why would you…’

Kylo looks at her, searching for something. ‘All right. You asked me if I wanted to hear your sad stories. Maybe it’s fair if I tell you one of mine. My father was a criminal. He and my mother didn’t get along and he’d walk out on her then be back a few months later and I was caught in the middle.’

‘You hated him?’

‘I didn’t hate him.’

It sounds true but if it is – ‘I don’t understand.’

He sighs. ‘He came to see me. To ask me for money. To ask me to keep him out of jail. I was already on the detective track by then and here comes my gun-running father asking me to break the law for him. Then he tried to force my hand by pinning it on my mother.’

That seems to be the extent of the explanation.

‘But he was your _family_ ,’ Rey pleads.

‘So? Your parents threw you away like garbage.’

‘They didn’t!’

‘And now you’re an adult but you can’t stop needing them.’

An alarm is going off in Rey’s head now, realisation crashing in on the heels of her denial. ‘How do you know that? How do you know any of that?’

Kylo is silent.

‘You ran a background check on me?’ Her voice is really small now.

‘No,’ he says at once, then hesitates before confessing, ‘Hux did.’

Somehow that’s worse. ‘And then the two of you, what, swapped notes?’

‘You were a person of interest in a homicide investigation.’

Rey swallows. Her head is spinning now. How much does he know? How much does this man who murdered his father, who she has gone out alone with into the desert, she’s so stupid, how much does he _know_?

Perhaps she should be more cautious now, and she should ask something like _is that why you wanted to fuck me?_ but the memories are building within her, building into a cacophony. Unkar Plutt's meaty hand holds her thin arm. She is sobbing, hysterical. _Quiet, girl!_ It’s a scream inside as she thinks about what she lost, how she ended up and what Kylo threw away. ‘You’re a monster,’ she whispers, not even sure who she is really talking to.

But it is Kylo who responds, ‘Yes, I am.’

There is silence for a moment before Kylo steps out of the car. Rey is shaking.

He picks up the gun.

She wants to flee but can’t, her muscles have locked rigid as she wonders what he’s going to do to her now.

Outside, Kylo snarls and starts shooting. Rey screams automatically but he’s not firing at her – he’s emptying the gun into the last of the targets he set up, advancing on them as he does so until his gun is empty and he’s right by the crate. He kicks it, starts smashing it. Rey covers her head and hides low in the car as he destroys anything out there.

She doesn’t know why she’s so shocked. She saw who he was long before she let him touch her.

Eventually, silence. Rey is still shaking in the car, braced as though at any moment he’ll come and start beating her.

When he does come back to the car he just stands there. She can feel him long before she’s ready to raise her head to see his face. When finally she finds the strength to do it, he’s just looking at her. She sees self-loathing rise in him as he takes in her tear-streaked face, how small she’s made herself.

‘Please take me home,’ she manages. Her voice is so small she’s not even sure he’ll hear her through the door.

He must, because he gets in the driver’s seat. The journey home is nothing like the ride earlier that day.

When they get to Rey’s building she finally manages to speak again. ‘Is this real?’

Kylo is back to being gentle now. ‘You and I are the only real things in the world.’

She shivers to hear him talk like that. ‘You hurt people.’ It’s not a question; she knows.

‘Sometimes.’ He turns to look at her then. ‘I don’t want you to be afraid of me. I told you what I told you because I wanted you to talk to me. You never talk to me.’

Rey wants to cry and scream all over again. ‘So you ask me who I killed?’

‘I know who you killed,’ Kylo tells her. ‘I just wanted to know your story. I’m the only person who could understand.’

‘I don’t want you to understand,’ Rey says, voice all but inaudible. She gets out of the car and runs inside her building without looking back. Then she sits on her bed and shakes for a very long time.

When Rey eventually looks at her phone again, she has a slew of texts from Finn, all full of innuendo. There’s an eggplant emoji or three, then some sighing over how intense Kylo must be. ‘Oh, that was very smooth, Daddy, getting you out into the hot hot desert. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

Her fingers are still unsteady as she types, ‘Finn, he asked who I killed and if I wanted him to kill anyone for me.’

It’s only about thirty seconds later that Finn calls her. ‘Are you serious?

Silence clangs between them.

She hears him swallow hard. ‘Oh peanut, what did you say?’

‘I tried to laugh, but… He said he knows, Finn. And the other bit, I think he really meant it.’

‘They can’t get you here, Rey,’ Finn promises, as he has so many times before. ‘You’re safe.’

That’s when she finally tells him, ‘Someone tried to mug me.’

‘What? When?’

‘Last week.’

There’s a pause. ‘Why are you just telling me now?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Don’t give me that.’

‘I don’t know. It’s stupid. It happened the same night Kylo and I… and that seemed like the bigger deal. And I didn’t want to scare you, so I…’

‘We don’t lie to each other, Rey. Not even by omission.’

Tears are welling up in her eyes now. She hasn’t cried in years. She gasps, ‘I’m sorry,’ and Finn must hear how she’s feeling in her voice because what he says next is much softer.

‘I think you should come over to my place and sleep there for a few nights, maybe even a week.’

Rey doesn’t answer at once.

‘It would make me really happy,’ Finn says. ‘It’ll be like the old days. When we were first here, I mean. What do you say?’

Rey wraps her arms around herself and imagines having the comfort of her beloved Finn after everything that’s happened. ‘I would love that, Peanut.’

Ren has already tried to call her while she’s been talking to Finn. She’ll have to call into work for a couple of days and turn off her phone. Right now, Rey doesn’t feel like she’ll ever be able to look him in the eye again.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which bad things happen and before which I invite you to re-read the tags.

Staying with Finn is every bit the blissful oasis it ever was. Finn doesn’t push her, doesn’t ask her difficult questions. Finn is just there for her with near-infinite snacks and no scruples about sticking to small measures of tequila. He starts cuddling her the moment she’s inside and Rey, not realising until he does how badly this had been pressing on her, sobs a while.

When she’s finally calmer Finn rolls them a joint and they take turns drawing on it by the window. Finn lives on the same block as the Pussycat Lounge, the drag bar where he performs sometimes.

‘It’s safe as houses here,’ he assures her. ‘The Queens won’t be telling nobody you’re here.’

Rey smiles, thinly. ‘Just as well they don’t know I’ve been fucking a cop,’ she says quietly. ‘That’d probably change their opinion.’

‘You couldn’t have known he’d go psycho on you.’

‘I should have. I saw it in him.’ She takes a deep breath and finally admits, ‘That was part of it, I guess.’

‘Do wish you’d told him?’ Rey knows what he means but he still says, ‘About Plutt?’

‘He told me he knew and that he would understand.’ She’s sure her tone gets across how little faith she has in that kind of promise.

And really, what is there to say? Rey had been in foster care in Britain. The bad kind. Finn had been the only bright spot then, just as he was the only bright spot now. And Rey could stand the neglect and the exploitation, the occasional assault and the constant fear. The line Plutt never should have crossed was Finn.

When they were free of him, they were infamous in Britain. Depending on whether it was the _Sun_ or the _Star_ depended whether they were helpless victims or ruthless killers. So Rey had worked out how to get the money together for the cheapest flights to an English-speaking country she could find and here they were three years later.

‘Do you think he might understand? He is a cop, after all. They can’t all be bad.’

She hasn’t told Finn about Ren killing his father. It’s something she doesn’t know what to do with herself, an artefact she pulls out to examine whenever she’s alone for too long, trying to make sense of it.

‘He’s bad,’ Rey says. She takes another long draw on the joint. ‘And I don’t want to talk about him any more.’

‘All right then,’ Finn says, changing tactics from weed to shots in a heartbeat. ‘I think what you need is something to take your mind off things completely.’

Rey plays along. ‘As for example a performance from the one and only Storm D’Vine?’

‘As for instance!’ Finn bats his eyelashes at her and asks, ‘Do you think sequins or fringe for tonight’s performance?’

‘I _always_ think sequins,’ Rey returns although she’s never given sequins a thought of her own accord in her whole life.

Finn knows that, too. ‘Liar,’ he pouts. But he puts on the sequins anyway. The dress is green and gold and catches the light just so. It would take too long for him to do the full face of Storm’s makeup so he just puts on the eyelashes and hits play on JLo’s _This Boy’s Fire_.

The beat drives through Rey, that Santana guitar on top of her dual buzz bringing her out of herself. She grabs the bottle and takes a long drink, then gets to her feet and begins to dance.

‘Yes, girl!’ 

While Finn is frantically lip-syncing _I know I drive him loco But that's just the way You make a mama's hips go_ , Rey pulls him into waltz hold and starts the one salsa step she knows. Finn is much better and he’s soon spinning her around, catching the energy and letting it take them up. After JLo it’s Taylor Swift and then it’s Sia then Rihanna and everything is colour and light and music and the fuzz of the alcohol and Rey loves Finn so much, so much she can barely keep it all in her chest and in that moment everything is ok.

In the morning, Finn has to go to work. Even if Rey is hiding from the world, he still has to make rent somehow so it’s off to his cleaning gig in the morning and then he’ll be on his assortment of apps later in case someone wants him to help them move or walk a dog or whatever.

‘So dismissive,’ he says, flapping a hand at her. ‘We can’t all be genius mechanics.’

‘Was that a _Firefly_ reference?’

‘Maybe. And if I don’t go to work – let me do the math here, nothing into nothing, carry the nothing...’

‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t making fun,’ Rey says. ‘Promise. I was just remembering when we were first in the city and we’d spend all that time together.’

‘Mm. Why did we break up as roommates again?’

‘You were flat broke and I could barely afford to keep myself, so your drag momma took you in.’

Finn smiles. ‘God, I miss Maz.’

‘Yeah.’ Rey reaches out to hug him again. ‘Go, make money. I’ll see about food. It’s only fair since I’m scrounging a bed for the night.’

‘Nice try but it’s going to be couch for you again tonight, missy. Besides, I don’t fancy coming home to Great Value instant mash.’

‘You were damn grateful for it back in the day!’

‘Just see how far we’ve come,’ he says, dropping a kiss on her forehead. ‘I’ll text you when I’m on my way and you can spring for pizza or something, sound good?’

‘Sure will.’ Rey hesitates a moment.

‘No, I will not take any more of your money,’ Finn says, knowing her well. ‘You ain’t getting paid for these days either, are you?’

So Rey just says, ‘Thank you. For everything.’

‘It’s nothing baby girl,’ Finn says. ‘Just, you’d better not be here when I bring Poe Dameron back to show him a good time is all.’

Thing is though, Rey is not the type of person who can sit around all day with nothing to do. After Finn heads out she tries to get some more rest but although emotionally exhausted, she’s still wakeful. She doesn’t want to turn on her phone. That is, she’s afraid to turn on her phone. And even if she was the type to read, Finn doesn’t have a lot of books around.

She spends the morning tidying up the drinks and snacks from the night before but that only does so much to alleviate her pent-up energy. Sighing, she wanders out into Finn’s building. She’s not sure how far it might be safe to go but she’s going to go stir-crazy if she stays inside Finn’s tiny apartment all day.

Cassian is hanging around the entrance as he often does when nothing else is going on for him. ‘Hello Rey. Staying a while?’

‘Boy trouble,’ Rey replies with a tight smile. Better to downplay it than to have Cassian start prodding.

‘Mm,’ Cassian doesn’t seem to be paying attention. ‘Better keep your head down. There’s three dead women now, did you hear?’

‘I didn’t.’ Rey swallows. ‘Do you know who?’

‘Paige Tico, you knew about. Now Jessika Pava, an engineering student. And Amilyn Holdo – you know her?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Ran a _lupanar_ just off Crait.’

Rey had a sudden thought. ‘Tall, thin, purple hair?’

‘Thought you didn’t know her.’

‘I didn’t. Detective Hux showed me her picture that day you walked me home.’

Cassian grunted. ‘That one’s been all over the neighbourhood but it’s his partner you need to watch out for.’

Rey stilled. ‘Oh?’

‘Yeah, the big guy with the long nose and the dark hair.’ Rey closed her eyes – she’d been afraid of that. But Cassian is still talking. ‘Didn’t I tell you he beat the shit out of DJ the other week?’

Rey licks her dry lips before she answers. ‘No. I mean, you said someone had but I didn’t… how is DJ doing?’

‘He’ll live.’

‘Good. That’s good.’

Cassian looks at her a little oddly. ‘Were you going out?’

‘Yes. No? I don’t know. I’m going crazy inside but…’

‘It’s not safe,’ Cassian finishes for her. ‘You could head out of the neighbourhood? Got tokens for the subway?’

‘A couple actually, yeah.’ Rey reaches into her trust bag and finds them. 

‘So go. Take a break in one of the parks or something. Just be home before dark.’

That last felt like a command and maybe Rey should resent it but so few people in her life have expressed concern for her that she almost likes the way Cassian says it.

So Rey takes the subway over to Tuanul, another district notable for its large parks and African supermarkets. Because although Rey is an absolutely pitiful cook, she can at least pick up some ingredients so that she and Finn between them can put together something to remind him of Maz’s cooking. She knows he _dreams_ about that pepper soup and jollof rice. And this at least she can do for him.

It’s mid-afternoon by the time she gets there, the journey longer than she remembered. It’s been a long time since she’s been out this way, not since the last time Maz sent her on a ‘supply run’ before she died. It’s still pretty here, relatively speaking. The building are whiter and less graffitied, the parks larger and less overgrown. Rey walks the park between the subway station and Little Lagos, soaking up the sunlight she so rarely sees and tries not to prod at the knots inside her. Three dead women, Kylo’s a murderer and he and Hux both _know…_

She shoves the fear away. She has to _think_.

But before she can even try to form any kind of plan, she spots a familiar face: Rose Tico, sitting quietly on a bench all alone.

Rey half turns, curses herself. She doesn’t want to get involved, first rule of Jakku is never get involved, but the poor girl lost her sister and Rey is starting to feel like the key to everything that’s been going on with her is tied to those dead bodies.

She steps closer instead of running. ‘Hey Rose,’ she says gently. 

Rose looks up and wipes her face with her sleeve, almost defiantly. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Trying to clear my head. Like you maybe?’

Rose looks away. She’s usually a sweet, sunny kind of person so that her next words are an apology is hardly surprising. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not at my best right now and doing talking is exhausting.’

Rey nods. ‘Yeah. Cops make you do a whole lot of talking.’

‘You too huh?’ Rose looks at her a little suspiciously.

‘They keep asking if I maybe heard anything or saw something. I told them no, but… You know the ginger one?’

‘Hux? Yeah, he’s been quite sweet to me really.’

Rey blinks at that absolutely nonsensical news. ‘Hux has?’

Rose nods. ‘Keeps promising me they’re going to find whoever killed her. But so far nothing.’ She tugs on a golden semicircle hanging from a leather cord around her neck.

‘Was that hers?’ Rey wonders aloud.

‘She had the other half.’ Rose hold it up so that Rey can see it better, the carvings and the crosshatching.

‘It’s pretty,’ Rey says softly.

‘It’s unique. Like her.’

Rey doesn’t have anything more comforting to add so she pats Rose awkwardly on the hand. ‘I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry,’ she says and then she lets Rose have the privacy she no doubt came here for.

Little Lagos has changed a bit but not much in the last two years. It doesn’t take long for Rey to find the rice, jollof seasoning, coconut peanuts and scotch bonnets. The pepper seasoning takes longer – Maz would never _ever_ have used premade and while Rey can’t remember the proportions, she’s sure Finn will know. Ataiko, uda and gbafilo all go in the basket. Vegetables she can pick up a bit nearer home – there’s one good grocery store in the neighbourhood which should have tomatoes and onions even at this time of day.

There was nothing Rey could have done today that could possibly have calmed her more than this – thinking of a way to treat Finn. She feels almost herself again.

Which still brings her to the question of what to do about Kylo Ren. She thinks about him all the way back to Jakku on the subway but her options never really seem to come into focus and her brain starts to hurt after a while.

She can’t hide at Finn’s forever, but she could run. Leave the city and try somewhere completely new. But she’d have run from a detective who knows about her and who could potentially use his connections to track her down afterwards. Not a great plan.

Or she could try to talk to him. He’s always on at her to talk to him anyway. But what if it’s all just a trick? Can she really trust Kylo Ren, knowing that he’s a ticking time bomb?

What about trying to report him for killing his father? It’s crossed her mind but that one’s an absolute non-starter. He’s a cop, she is who she is and she has absolutely no evidence to support her claims.

Maybe she should try being really honest with Finn and see if he has any ideas. He was always better than her at making up cover stories. 

It’s dark by the time Rey is back in Jakku. She stops by the second market to pick up the rest of the supplies, things she didn’t want to haul across town, and takes a bus from there to Finn’s. The bus is probably slower than walking but it means Rey isn’t on the streets and there are other people around, at least.

She lets herself into Finn’s building which is oddly quiet for dinner time but Rey doesn’t really notice until she’s up the stairs on Finn’s landing.

His door isn’t closed. It looks as though someone slammed it a bit too hard and ran off.

Rey’s fingers tighten on her precious shopping. ‘Finn?’ she says but her voice isn’t working right because she already knows even though she can’t, even though it’s not true, it can’t be true, no.

But there’s blood on the floor when she steps over the threshold. The bag slips from her hand and something shatters while she crosses the room to the door where she can see the blood pooling. A terrible keening sound is coming from somewhere – is she making it? It’s only just louder than silence but there’s so much pain in it.

Rey opens the bathroom door. Her legs go out from under her.

On the floor, half his face painted as Storm, is Finn staring sightless at the ceiling, blood all over his bare chest and pretty satin skirt.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rey goes BSOD and before which the author reminds you again to confer with the tags

Rey holds Finn in her arms. Time passes.

The first thing she is conscious of is Cassian pulling at her.

‘Come on. Rey, we’ve got to go.’

‘I can’t leave him,’ she moans.

‘Listen to me,’ Cassian says, trying to be kind, trying to meet her eyes even though Rey doesn’t think they’re working right. ‘He’s gone. There’s nothing you can do. Come on.’

He pulls at Rey’s arm but she flinches away. ‘I can’t leave him.’

Rey holds Finn in her arms. Time passes.

Someone must have called the police because there’s a buzz around her now. Someone tries to pull her away from Finn, gently, but still _someone is trying to take her away from Finn_ and she thinks maybe she lashes out but she isn’t really sure.

Then finally, Kylo is there. ‘Rey?’ he says softly. ‘Rey, I need you to let him go.’

She shakes her head dumbly, but she can focus on his voice if not his face and it helps anchor her a little.

‘Rey,’ he says and his voice is so sorry and so kind that she manages to loosen her hold. The blankness inside lurches suddenly towards hysteria then abruptly back again, feelings moving so fast it make Rey sick. And then she’s vomiting on the floor.

How embarrassing, some distant part of her mind remarks.

Hux is there too, and if more of her brain was working she might be able to work out what that expression on his face is.

‘We need her clothes,’ he says to Kylo, his voice not unkind. ‘For trace.’

‘I know,’ Kylo says and it’s a peculiar tone as he half-snaps while trying not to startle Rey. ‘Rey, can you stand?’

She nods. She can’t entirely make sense of what’s happening but she can stand. And Kylo is leading her away and she let go of Finn sometime and she knows she’s never going to touch him again and it burns like the bile in her throat and Kylo is unbuttoning her dress but it doesn’t mean what it usually means and he asks if she has something to put on and behind him she sees that dress from last night, those green and gold sequins shining like the last time she’ll ever be happy and she says only ‘Storm’ and Kylo doesn’t understand but it doesn’t matter because that roughly croaked-out word bursts the dam and that’s the last thing she can remember for a while.

Rey wakes up at home some time later. She is wearing Storm’s sequin dress. She’s not sure how she got here but someone must have cleaned her up because there’s no blood on her hands.

She knows only one thing for certain: today calls for tequila.

She drags herself to the bodega on the corner and open the bottle before she’s even out of the store. There’s a vague yell but she ignores it and takes a long, hard swallow. It burns worse than the bile she can still feel but she keeps it down through sheer force of will and drinks again.

She’s blind drunk by the time she calls Kylo. She’s only aware of bits of it. She cries. She asks him to tell her about the murders and he tries to answer, but she only gets bits like _he seems to take trophies_ and _we’re not seeing a connection_ and _multiple stab wounds_ and _no new leads._ She screams at him. She asks him what he was even doing at Finn’s and that is when he explodes.

‘I am _always_ going somewhere there’s a dead person. Only difference this time it was your best friend. I’m always in a strange room, looking for the worst and it always surprises me. And maybe one day I’ll see something that means I can’t do my job any more but until then I look at things that would make anyone else cave in inside and something in me takes over and I’m a detective. All right?’

She isn’t sure if she calls him a murderer again. She isn’t sure which of them hangs up.

It’s day two or maybe three of the bender when someone knocks at Rey’s door. A better measure: it is bottle six. She is still wearing the sequins; it’s been a while now and she is probably starting to get ripe. But that’s all right, she didn’t invite anyone over anyway.

At the door is Poe Dameron, of all people. She blinks at him, confused. ‘I didn’t know you knew where I live,’ she says.

‘I walked you home from the bar that time.’

‘Right,’ she says, not remembering.

He straightens, uncomfortable. Rey sees that his eyes are red. He must have been crying over Finn, too. It should make her happy, that Finn had more than just her to cry over him but instead it enrages her. Who is this stranger to cry over her Finn?

Poe clears his throat. ‘You weren’t answering your phone.’ Of course not – she only turned it on to yell at Kylo. Where did it end up after that? ‘I just wanted to see if you were all right.’ He’s clearly hoping to come in but Kylo is coming over. That’s just a matter of time. And she knows it would not be a good idea for Poe to be here when Kylo arrives.

Rey hears herself say, ‘Come in.’

He does. She raises the tequila bottle by way of invitation and he takes it from her, drinks it straight down from the bottle the same way she’s been doing. It reassures her a little.

Poe always seemed like good people. She even thought he might be good enough for Finn, which was the highest compliment she could pay another human being. But right now all she can think is how much older he looks than she remembers, and how the two of them spending time alone is a vicious reminder of who isn’t here.

He hands her back the tequila and they alternate drinks in silence for a while.

Eventually Poe says, ‘I thought he was amazing.’

Rey nods, not trusting herself to speak.

‘I want…’ he wipes at his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to somebody who knew him. I thought it would help you as well as me, but it’s too soon, isn’t it?’

Rey doesn’t answer. It should be obvious just from the way she looks – thin, pale, drunk, wearing a dress far too glamourous for anything short of a drag show. She takes another long drink. ‘I just want it all to go away,’ she says. She wants Kylo, she thinks, but really what she wants is Finn, she knows and Finn is dead, dead as she drinks the tequila and dead as she stifles her sobs and still dead as she somehow ends up kissing Poe Dameron.

There’s a frenzy to it, a desperation. She pulls Poe’s curly hair, so different from Kylo’s soft silk beneath her fingers, and realises that in her drunken anguish she’s forgotten how to stop. Oh, not Poe, but herself – this is a horrible idea and she’s going to see it through. This is how she can blot it all out, this. She’ll fuck the one connection to Finn she has and then she’ll be dead like he is.

Poe is holding on to her shoulders and biting at her neck. Keeping his hands away from her breasts? She’s grinding against him well enough that he should know who she is and what she isn’t. He’s pulling at her dress though so it’s hanging over one shoulder and Rey opens her eyes and wonders if she’s going to enjoy letting him fuck her or if she’s going to hate it. If Kylo maybe isn’t coming after all and if she’s doing this to hurt him as much as to hurt herself.

Poe breaks away suddenly. ‘Rey, I didn’t come here for… You’re drunk and I…’

‘Get out then,’ she says, shoving him so hard and fast he almost stumbles. His eyes are wounded and she might feel bad about this if she could feel anything. She turns away, back to the tequila. Her purse is on the table and she reaches for it, rummaging to find her phone.

Poe says something quiet before he goes but Rey is already calling Kylo’s number. She looks out of the window to make sure Poe really leaves her building and sees him run into Hux of all people. Does that mean Kylo is here?

She sticks her head out of the window before she can think better of it, tossing the phone aside. ‘Hux! Hey, Hux!’

Both men look up at her. Poe looks embarrassed; Hux looks amused.

‘If your boy is with you, tell him not to bother me!’

Hux salutes her, cigarette in hand, his expression full of mockery. Rey takes another long drink and shuts the window.

When Kylo gets there he knocks for quite a while. ‘Rey, come on, wake up.’

She likes listening to his voice plead with her, that’s the sad part. She listens for a long while before she lets him in.

He eyes her and she eyes him back. He’s all detective tonight – that stupid suit, the holster bulging a little, black leather gloves the only item he removes when he come in.

‘Do you remember speaking to me yesterday?’ he asks.

‘Bits I guess.’ They’re standing in the entryway. Kylo leans against the wall while Rey hovers in what passes for the kitchen about two paces away.

‘You asked me a whole bunch of really fucked up things.’ His eyes are less sad than usual. Instead they are harder. Angrier.

She should apologise.

‘But then Hux said you were screaming half-naked out the window.’

Rey looks down at herself. She’s still got on that dress except that it’s mostly off the shoulder now. She’s got on a bra otherwise her right tit would be hanging out. ‘I guess that’s true.’ She suddenly feels very sober. ‘Is it the same guy?’

‘Why do you—’

‘I need to know! I need to know _everything you can tell me_.’ She’s probably screaming again. She’s not sure how to tell.

Kylo stares at her a while. ‘Finn was stabbed. You know that. The weapon is similar to the ones used to carve up the women, coroner says, but the MO is different. The women were killed methodically. Patiently. Finn… it looks like someone just lost their temper. Do you remember giving a statement?’

Rey shakes her head.

‘Yeah, well it was barely coherent. You said he wasn’t expecting anyone except maybe a Poe Dameron. Who Hux spoke to yesterday when he was leaving your apartment.’ Kylo’s voice hardens on that last; Rey looks away.

‘I’m not going to ask if you fucked him because I don’t want to know.’ His hands twitch when he says that. He’s lying. ‘I’m just going to say what I said before: no witnesses, no one heard a damn thing. Except for the neighbour, Andor, who said he heard you crying and called us. No other details. But what else is new in your neighbourhood?’

‘You saying it’s our fault? Finn gets frisked, Cassian gets questioned every time anything happens but it’s our fault?’

‘You live in a neighbourhood rife with Jamaican drug dealers and Mexican gun runners and you all stick together so is it really surprising we can’t make any fucking headway?’

‘You racist now too?’

‘Don’t fucking do that, Rey. Don’t. I have done everything I can think of and I _know_ there’s something I’m missing. I feel like I would be so much further into this case if…’

‘If what?’

Kylo sighs. He leans back against the wall, his body at right angles to hers. ‘I’m in your brother’s apartment and I’m trying to figure out what happened and I can’t because I’m worrying about you. Do you see how that’s a problem?’

She wants to snap _so now it’s my fault_ but she’s tired of pushing him away. Who else is going to turn up here trying to help her?

‘Unkar Plutt.’

His head turns towards her just a little.

‘That was the man I killed. He was our foster carer, mine and Finn’s. He worked us like slaves and he beat us sometimes. I could take that. But then he let one of his friends…’ Rey couldn’t finish the sentence. ‘It was one thing when it was me.’

‘You killed him when he did it to Finn,’ Kylo says, his tone confirming that he’d already known that.

‘All that was in the file?’

‘I didn’t need to read that part. I told you: I know you.’

Rey wants to ask him about his father but first she wants a drink. She reaches for the tequila again but Kylo knocks it out of her hands to the floor before she can even touch her fingertips to the glass. A long moan comes from her throat.

Kylo is unsympathetic. ‘Look, Rey, I know it hurts but you’ve got to let yourself feel it.’

‘I thought I was supposed to let the past die.’

‘The past, yes. The present – you can’t block out pain or hatred. You have to learn how to use them.’

Was he trying to comfort her? It was so hard to tell, particularly with the shattered tequila bottle looking at her from the floor.

‘I'm not good at this,’ Kylo says softly, almost to himself, before he says, ‘Want me to go, I'll go. Want me to stay, I'll stay.’

Rey doesn’t answer, doesn’t know how.

‘You’ve got to want something.’

She wets her lips. ‘I'm scared of what I want.’

‘Why? Is it a lot?’

‘Yeah.’

If they had a different kind of relationship he might have embraced her then, and she’s not sure how she would have reacted. They don’t share much tenderness. Rey knows she’s averse to it. Instead he places his hand over hers and she feels the warmth of his fingers steadying her, telling her she isn’t alone.

Then, raw and desperate, ‘What do you want from _me_?’

Rey looks at him, unable to form an answer.

He nods as if this is just another confirmation. ‘I don’t think I can be what you want,’ he says. ‘I’ve done a lot, I told you that, but with you it’s different. I feel like I’m never quite who you hoped for.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Rey says. She is furious.

He sees it. ‘So why do you keep letting me in? If that’s how you feel?’

Rey doesn’t answer.

‘It’s not like I don’t know,’ Kylo says, and there’s a note of bitterness in his tone. ‘You wouldn’t give me the time of day if I didn’t fuck you.’

There it is. That savagery right below the surface that makes it so thrilling to get his attention. What a wonderful distraction from the sick misery.

She snaps at him, ‘That’s what we do isn’t it? Why, what do you want?’

He’s looking at her in that assessing, calculating way he did once before. ‘I know one thing you want,’ he says at last. ‘Rey, I would do anything you wanted. Anything I could do. The only thing I won’t do is hit you.’

Oh.

‘Is that what you want? Someone to be a brute to you? Should I tie you up, tell you I can take whatever I want?’

Rey shivers.

Kylo makes a disgusted sound. ‘You think you’re the first girl who’s wanted to fuck me because of the badge and the gun?’

She can’t help but ask, ‘How many, Detective Ren? How many groupies have you fucked?’

Mournful eyes flash fury. ‘A lot. A different cunt every night for ten years. That what you want to hear? You want to hear all the positions, all the things they begged me to do to them—’

He’s cut off when Rey slams her mouth on his, yanking him down to her, shoving her tongue into his mouth. And oh, if she thought she was prepared to fuck Poe Dameron she is damn near insane for Kylo Ren, all her feelings mixed up, the rage and pain and the burst of lust and _this_ is what she needs, she knows now.

‘That’s right,’ he’s saying. ‘Give it to me, put it all on me, I can take it,’ and he’s grinding against her, pulling at her buttocks to drag her closer.

She can feel his gun when she puts her arms up around his neck and she loves it, slides his jacket off his shoulders so she can be closer to it. She licks his neck and bites his earlobe. ‘You think I need to hear about all your sluts?’

‘Maybe,’ Kylo says and it means _no._

‘You think I'm obsessed with you?’

‘Maybe,’ Kylo says, and it means _Yes, yes I do._

‘Fuck you.’ Then she is reaching for his handcuffs, his own police-issue handcuffs.

Kylo’s eyes dart back and forth between the cuffs and Rey’s face. ‘What's this?’

‘You'll see,’ she says, snapping one of the cuffs around his wrist, dragging the other to the radiator pipe further into the apartment.

He wets his lips. ‘Will I like it?’

Rey shoves him so he’s sitting on the old stool she lifted from a closed down bar. ‘I don't know,’ but he lets her do it.

‘You’re not sure?’

‘No, you’re not sure,’ she retorts and he’s hard when she puts her hand on him. ‘You know what else? I think _you’re_ obsessed with _me_ ,’ Rey says as she strokes his cock. ‘I think you were every bit as alone as I was.’

Kylo’s hand, the one not chained up, reaches up into her hair to pull her head back. ‘I was doing fine before I met you. You’re nothing.’

Rey slaps him across the face, just lightly. ‘Don’t lie. You said you’d kill for me.’ He hisses and draws her closer, starts biting at her nipple through her dress, getting a mouthful of sequins for his trouble. He is in control as she did not want him to be even now, even tied down. Maybe he is right after all about who is obsessed.

Rey wriggles her panties off beneath her clothes and sits down on Kylo’s thighs, aligning their bodies, pulling his cock free to sink down onto it. She moans, can’t help it; he gasps, neither can he. She tilts her body away from his for better purchase. He uses his free hand to draw her dress away from her body so he can watch his cock disappear into her.

‘Go on, fuck yourself on me,’ he whispers, his voice always such a turn on. ‘I want to watch you fuck yourself.’

‘You like to watch.’

His ‘Yes’ might be an answer, might just be encouragement. ‘That's it. Fuck yourself.’

Rey throws back her head, pulling the hair at the base of Kylo’s neck to keep herself balanced. The stretch of him inside her is still good, still so very good. ‘Am I nothing to you?’

‘Not to me,’ he says as he watches her. ‘If I keep looking at you, I'll have to quit being a cop.’

‘Tell me you’d kill for me,’ she gasps.

‘Anyone,’ he promises. ‘Anyone at all.’

She gasps and slides her fingers down to touch herself. It doesn’t take long – she’s been raring to go for half the day. She knows Kylo is a bit behind, nowhere near coming yet, but she can’t slow down, doesn’t want to. He uses his free hand to grab her hair and pull her head back and oh yes, that’s it, everything in the world narrows until it is just her body flying apart as she rides him.

When Rey comes back to herself he is still moving shallowly within her. He lets go of her hair slowly, nibbling at her jaw, his large hands enveloping her back. She wants him so much even now when he’s inside her.

‘Take that dress off and do that again, so I can come,’ he whispers.

‘No,’ she says, and kisses him. ‘No, I want you to fuck me from behind. Leave bruises on my ass.’

‘That works, too,’ he says with a smile. ‘You going to let me out of these cuffs so I can see to it?’

‘Can’t pick them? I’ll have to show you how sometime.’ She smiles at him the way he’s smiling at her, the most real smile she’s seen from him. Maybe he feels like they’ve connected now. She does, actually, and she can see now why it’s something he might have wanted.

Kylo groans a little when Rey leverages herself off him, off his cock, to get the keys for the cuffs out of his jacket. She makes a tease of it a bit, not pulling her dress down to cover herself, bending over further than she has to. Kylo growls and tries to lunge for her but she darts out of his reach with a startled laugh.

It’s fucked up how free she feels in this moment.

She reaches into Kylo’s jacket pocket and pulls out what must be the key to the cuffs. But that’s not the only thing in there.

There’s also a little plastic spaceship charm with a broken string, which had been hanging from her purse right up until a creature in a mask attacked her.

So how did it end up in Kylo Ren’s pocket?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> esox_lucius, you called it ;) Feel free to leave me a drabble prompt if you'd like!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything comes to a head

The blood in Rey’s body feels as though it is slowing down, moving in her thickly. Then her heart stops beating. She can’t breathe.

Kylo’s voice behind her. ‘Rey, what’s wrong? I thought you wanted me to…’

She can’t bear to hear him say it so she turns with her spaceship on the palm of her hand for him to see.

‘Oh, that?’ he says, calm. ‘I keep forgetting to give it to you.’

‘Forgetting?’ She doesn’t understand.

Kylo takes a step towards her but the handcuffs pull him back. He grunts. ‘Scumbags telling me all the time how much these things hurt and I never believed them. Let me out, will you?’

‘Where did you get this?’

Kylo stops tugging on the chain and really looks at her for a moment. ‘Where you were mugged. Went back to see if there was any physical evidence we could use and I found that but there wasn’t anything we could use on it so I thought you’d want it back.’

Rey can’t hear him. ‘It was you?’

‘What?’

‘It was _you._ ’ She backs away as far as she can in the limited space of her apartment. He’s a monster and she knew it – did she bring him here to destroy her?

Kylo’s temper is starting to rise. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

‘Trophies, you said. I remember that. And condition corrected.’ She laughs, or at least she thinks that’s the sound she makes. ‘What condition were you correcting when you beat DJ?’

‘DJ? What the hell are you—’

‘I saw you!’ she screams. ‘The first time I saw you, you were beating the shit out of someone and I found out later it was…’

‘You mean the blackmailer?’ he bursts. ‘I took care of it. You want me to apologise for that?’

‘Did you kill Finn?’

Kylo’s face hardens. ‘This again?’

‘ _Did you kill Finn_?’

Kylo is moving slowly now but there’s a deliberate quality to it, that violence restrained she loves in him. ‘Give me the key, Rey,’ he says, holding out his hand. He knows how to do this of course, how to talk down a crazy person. She can’t let him…

A crunch startles her – faster than she would have thought possible, Kylo has punched a hole in her wall. ‘ _Give me the key!_ ’ he snarls and it’s like that breaks the spell and suddenly Rey can move. He’s too close to the door for her to reach it but she can go out the other way, to the window, to the fire escape. She bolts for the window while Kylo rages behind her, cursing at her, calling her names and she runs. She’s still got his jacket in her hands so she pulls it on; she isn’t wearing shoes and the metal steps and cold and painful on her feet.

She can hear him even from the street, still shouting and breaking things and she runs, pounds the pavement into the night with nothing, no purse, no phone, no shoes, no hope at all.

Finn’s apartment is locked up and the door frame plastered with crime scene tape. Of course she ended up here. It was the only place she ever felt really at home, until that illusion was shattered and her brother was taken from her. She touches the yellow tape absently. There are things she could use in there, she knows. Different clothes. Shoes that would work if she put on thick socks beneath. Finn’s things, she could wear Finn’s things. She would have to wear Finn’s things.

She can’t do it. Her eyes flood with tears. She’s so weak. She needs to go in there and figure out a way to survive but she just can’t do it.

‘Rey?’ a soft voice calls.

Cassian. Rey lets out a sob. Then hands appear on her arms, draw her into the apartment next to Finn’s.

She’s been in here before. The sofa is brown leather, held together with duct tape in a few places. Cassian gently guides her to it and places her feet on to his coffee table, moving papers and a full ashtray to make room. ‘You’ve cut yourself to shreds, _mija_. Let me get you some bandages.’

Rey sits and shudders while Cassian attends to her feet. He gives her something to drink – brandy, maybe? The alcohol helps top up the tequila in her system but maybe that wasn’t the best move on top of the week she’s had. She retches a little, gets bile on the arm of Ren’s jacket.

‘You’re all right,’ he tells her gently. ‘You’re all right.’

‘I’ve got to get out of here,’ she blurts.

He frowns. ‘You want me to take you home?’

‘No!’ she cries. His frown deepens. ‘No, I mean, I need to get out of here. Out of the city.’

Cassian stops what he’s doing and stares at her. ‘This is about more than Finn now, isn’t it? What kind of trouble are you in?’

‘I don’t… I…’ Rey licks her lips. ‘I think I’ve got caught up with this serial killer or whoever.’

‘What? How?’

Rey put her head in her hands, slopping brandy on her hands. ‘I can’t… Can you help me get out of the city?’

Cassian nods slowly. ‘Yes. Yes, of course. Are you going to need ID?’

A grateful sob escapes and Rey says, ‘ _Thank you._ ’

‘All right. We’ll finish getting you cleaned up and then I’ll make some calls, OK?’

‘OK,’ Rey says, smiling at him. ‘Can I get something to wipe this?’

‘I’ll get you some toilet paper,’ he says. ‘Don’t have Kleenex.’

He stands up and steps through to the bathroom for a second. Rey leans forward to put the brandy glass down on the coffee table. As she does something in Ren’s pocket jabs her. She pats them, aware enough to try and take stock of what she has. His phone – that’s lucky, means he can’t call anyone to let him out. It’s locked of course but she can figure that out later. Some coins, but only about seventy cents. A roll of Lifesavers. His badge.

Cassian comes back with the toilet paper and holds it out to her. His eyebrows climb his forehead when he sees what she is holding. ‘Where did you get that?’

Rey bites her lip. ‘I’m in the police kind of trouble.’

Cassian is obviously trying to process this but failing. ‘Is the serial killer a cop?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ Should she tell him that Kylo is at her apartment right now?

A frantic knocking at the door interrupts their moment. Rey cowers; Cassian makes a quick hand gesture designed to tell her to keep it down. ‘Who’s there?’ he calls out.

‘Kay,’ comes the reply.

Cassian’s body relaxes. ‘It’s all right, Rey.’ He goes to the door and open it a crack; Rey can’t see the man speaking. ‘Kay, I thought you were coming by later?’

‘I was. But I wanted to tell you not on the phone – there’s going to be a raid.’

Cassian swears under his breath. ‘Where? The workshop?’

‘Yes. Then they’ll probably hit the apartments. You either need to not be here or be here having a conspicuously studious evening.’

Rey stands bolt upright. ‘The cops can’t find me here!’

‘Who the hell is that?’ Kay’s voice says, his panic as evident as hers.

Cassian opens the door and ushers in a tall, thin man dressed from head to toe in police blues. Rey looks between the two of them, terrified. ‘Cassian, what…’

‘Rey Niima, Kay Tuesso. Kay, meet Rey. Rey needs to get out of town tonight.’

‘You’re police?’ Rey’s voice is shaking. She hates it.

‘I was,’ Kay says, glaring at Cassian. ‘You might say I was deprogrammed.’

‘So why are you dressed like that?’

‘Camouflage.’ Kay looks at Cassian. ‘Why is she asking so many questions?’

Cassian has been spending the last few precious minutes pulling on his coat, picking up a satchel and shoving notebooks into it. ‘She’s scared. Can you get her safely to Saw Gerrera?’

‘Why?’

‘She needs help.’ Cassian looks at Kay. ‘Remember when you needed help?’

Kay wavers for a moment then folds. Rey isn’t sure if it’s because he wants to do the right thing or because Cassian is the one asking. ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Jyn’s. I’ll drop this stuff off and meet you at the warehouse?’

‘All right.’ He glares at Rey. ‘I’ll get you there safely. If Cassian says I have to.’

Any other time, Rey would probably laugh at that but now she feels only fear. ‘Cassian, can’t I go with you?’ She’s heard the name Saw Gerrera but she doesn’t know him or this Kay. Cassian is the last friendly face in her world.

He stops what he’s doing and looks at her. ‘I would take you if I thought I could help you, Rey, but it sounds like you’ll be in more danger with me than with Kay.’

Rey feels her lip trembling. She’s not that girl; she never cries. She gulps it back now. ‘OK.’

Cassian touches her shoulder lightly, and Rey leans into it for once. ‘OK,’ he echoes, a reassurance.

Kay clicks his tongue impatiently. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Do you have a car?’ Rey asks when they get outside.

‘Four blocks away. Didn’t want to park outside Cassian’s apartment.’

‘The outfit doesn’t draw attention?’ Come to think of it, what must she look like, wearing three different peoples’ clothes? The only thing of hers she has right now is her bra.

She managed to keep the spaceship though. So she has one reminder of Finn, at least.

‘Cassian gets hassled often enough, no one will remember. Besides, without looking can you describe my face?’

Rey thinks. ‘Um, I don’t…’

‘Of course you can’t. It’s a blank to you. That’s my superpower.’ Kay eyes her. ‘Can you do anything to look less… obvious?’

Rey adjusts her shoes, and her hemline, pops the collar of the jacket to cover as much of her face as she can and starts walking.

Maybe this Saw Gerrera will have some spare underwear. Her undercarriage is definitely feeling a chill.

Kay walks immediately behind her, muttering under his breath. Rey doesn’t listen too hard, focusing on her surroundings. It’s business as usual on the streets tonight, it seems. Gangs out and about, the Jamaicans and the Mexicans selling different product in their designated corners. No one really bothers the two of them. Maybe she looks like she’s being arrested? Or maybe this looks more like she’s being helped home. She holds herself straight and moves as though she knows exactly where she’s going.

It works for precisely two blocks. It’s late and it’s dark so the streets are either bustling with the kind of people Rey is keen not to cross or they’re empty. They’re making good progress.

The police car on Teedo Street is a nasty surprise, although she should probably have expected it given what Kay’s been telling her. She slows her steps a little.

‘Just relax and keep going,’ Kay advises in an undertone.

Rey wants to, she really does, but on the other side of the street from the marked police car it’s Hux of all people with _Rose Tico_. Just like Rose had told her, he’s looking at her with this soft expression and Rose is obviously loving it. She’s all done up pretty and it must be a date, she looks like she’s happy to be there but Rey doesn’t believe in him for a second and ice spreads through her veins. If it was Kylo then there’s no way Hux isn’t involved and she doesn’t really know Rose but she likes her and she doesn’t want another dead body showing up when she knows things like this. Hux is touching Rose’s face gently now, leaning in, and Rose looks so simple and happy and without consulting her brain Rey’s feet are sprinting towards them.

Kay calls out something to her but she doesn’t hear him.

Hux looks up as she nears him and pushes Rose away just as Rey runs full pelt into him, slamming him against his own police car.

‘What the—’ he protests.

Rey is crying out, ‘Rose, no, don’t go anywhere with him!’

Rose blinks at her, shocked. ‘I… wasn’t. What are you doing?’

‘Saving you!’

‘From the nice conversation with the charming man?’ says Rose, blushing a little as she looks up at Hux.

‘He’s not… He’s _killed people_ , Rose! Just like Kylo!’

Hux has straightened himself up by now. ‘Oh, goodness, is that what this is? Did you and Ren have a fight?’

‘He’s a murderer!’

Hux clicks his tongue. ‘Miss Niima, I know, I _know_ you’re upset about everything that’s been happening and for good reason. Which is why I sent Ren to check on you, thinking it might help. You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?’

‘No! That is…’

Rose chimes in, ‘I can smell brandy.’

‘Right. So you’re drunk and hysterical in the street and dressed… what are you wearing?’

He’s so smug and calm that Rey can’t stand it. So she head butts him.

Rose gasps as Hux reels back a little, clutching his face. ‘All right,’ he says softly and then he’s grabbing her, pushing her against the car. ‘That’s assaulting a police officer.’

‘Are you all right, Army?’ Rose says.

‘I’m fine. But I think I need to take this one to the drunk tank.’

‘No! No, I don’t want to go with you, don’t…’

Hux speaks over her: ‘She’ll be fine once she’s slept it off. I’ll see if I can track down Ren to come get her.’

Rey is struggling but Hux is stronger than her, using his weight to keep her pinned while he handcuffs her. Kylo was right – it hurts. She doesn’t remember it hurting before.

She’s trying to fight but she can’t and she’s so tired and why did she do this? She catches Kay’s eye; he’s frozen where she ran from him. He shakes his head, wild-eyed and steps away. He can’t help her now. She’s blown her chance, she knows it.

Hux shoves her into his car. She’s never getting away.

He talks to Rose outside for another few minutes. Rose keeps turning her dark, compassionate eyes to Rey but it’s clear that she’s thinking this is just a reaction to Finn’s murder, the way she was in pieces after Paige. She doesn’t know to take the threat seriously. Rey keeps thrashing around but Rose just waves to her after a moment and heads home.

Then Hux gets in the driver’s seat and it’s just the two of them.

Rey quietens down. ‘Are we really going to the station?’

He doesn’t look at her. ‘What do you think?’

Rey nods to herself. ‘Are you going to hurt me?’

‘Why would you assume that?’

‘Because I can see you.’

Hux smiles. They’re only about two blocks from where they were but it must be far enough because he says, ‘I guess you can at that,’ right before he hits her with something that feels like a muscle cramp in her stomach at first. As Rey’s body convulses she thinks, ‘oh a taser, of course,’ then she feels herself slump and everything goes black.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we reach the denouement...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to those commenting - comments are love! There are a couple I can't think of how to reply to without spoiling my own story so I'll be sure and reply after the whole thing is up. Please know I appreciate you!

When Rey wakes, she is handcuffed, hands behind her back. Her head is pounding a little and her mouth is dry – it’s not much worse than the hangover she was expecting, but the handcuffs behind her back, keeping her pinned to this weird chair are a nasty surprise.

Then she remembers. Kylo, Finn, Rose, _Hux._

He’s there when she opens her eyes, smoking while he waits for her to wake.

She takes in the room. It’s mostly black. She wonders if he painted it specially.

‘Oh good, you’re up. I’m glad we have some time to talk,’ Hux says. He picks up an ashtray from by his foot on the floor and stubs out his cigarette. ‘It’s the one good thing to come out of that scene you caused. You see, people saw us together. _Rose_ saw us together and she may not be that bright but she’s not _that_ stupid either. So I’m going to have to keep you here a few days, I’m sorry to say.’

He stands up from sitting. His clothes are all a charcoal grey, extremely neat. Hux looks sharper than usual now. Better rested, oddly. Then Rey realises: this is the real him.

‘Will I be alive for those few days?’ she manages to ask.

Hux smiles. ‘Let’s see.’

He crosses to a table at the other side of the room, places the ashtray there out of the way. There’s a coat stand next to it and he’s neatly hung up Kylo’s jacket there. Must have taken it off her when she was out.

Hux methodically takes his badge out of his pocket and places it down. Takes off his jacket and hangs it up. Removes his gun from his holster and lays them both out on the table. ‘I’m not going to need any of that, am I, Rey? Because tonight, I’m off duty.’

Rey shudders. Her first question surprises her. ‘What are you doing with Rose?’

‘Enjoying her company.’

‘You can’t really expect me to believe you’re interested in—’

‘I’m not planning on giving you a full confession, in case that’s why you think you’re here,’ Hux says blandly. ‘I’m just curious about a few things.’

Rey swallows, trying to stimulate saliva production in her dry mouth. ‘Could I have some water?’

‘Later.’ Hux is pacing now. ‘I didn’t remember you at first but I think I do now – you were the woman who watched us beat up that stupid extortionist, weren’t you?’

‘“Us”?’ Rey says, playing for time.

‘Ren, then. I couldn’t work out why you’d be dating him but then I looked you up and I thought, oh. She thinks they’re kindred spirits.’

Rey has nothing to give in this moment except the truth. ‘I’m nobody.’

‘Not to me,’ Hux says and it’s so far removed from the way Kylo meant it that Rey could cry. ‘Rather ironically, you may be the only person I talk to who might understand.’

‘Understand what? Why you kill people?’

Hux sighs as though she’s failing some sort of test.

‘Did you really kill Paige? And the others? And Finn?’

He doesn’t answer but she knows anyway.

‘Why?’ A broken cry, a child’s plea against the awful truth.

Hux licks his lips. ‘You killed the foster father who abused you. How did it feel?’

‘What?’

‘I know something about disappointing father figures.’ He waits expectantly but Rey has no idea what he wants from her. ‘Never mind. You’ll like this story, I think – it’s about Ren.’

Rey can feel the blood drain from her face.

‘It was his first _condition corrected_ ,’ Hux says, eyes gleaming. ‘We were chasing down a man named Watto. He had child slaves. We cornered him in an old factory and he kept refusing to answer any questions, insisting he was innocent even though we _knew_ he wasn’t and Ren, whatever his faults, is a damn good interrogator. We also knew that he had at least some of the children locked in an underground vault somewhere and they might well die before we got to them. So Ren started to beat him. You’ve seen him in that frenzy he gets, yes?’

Rey closes her eyes. Yes, she’s seen it. She knows who Kylo is.

‘Watto finally confessed. But by then Kylo had beaten him almost to death. I looked at Watto and I thought about Ren getting pulled in by IA or something for just… taking out the trash. So I said to Ren, if we throw him off the building it will cover the damage you’ve done.

‘Ren looked at me in surprise. I think he’d thought I was going to turn him in. I don’t know why. The two of us managed to get Watto out on to the fire escape and then… he fell.’ Hux smiles to himself. ‘A beautiful arc he made, like he was trying to fly. When the Captain found out what had happened, he said that Ren had “corrected his condition”.’ He laughs. ‘Of course, Ren didn’t think it was funny. At first.’

‘Kylo wouldn’t do that.’

‘You really think that? You saw him with your own eyes beating a man senseless.’

She knows but ‘It’s different!’

‘If you say so,’ Hux says carelessly. ‘Does it make it better if he hates himself for it? Hates me too, because he knows we’re the same.’

Rey is trembling with rage right alongside the fear, now. ‘He’s nothing like you. And you know it. That’s why you’re afraid of him.’

She’s struck a nerve: Hux stills. ‘You think I’m afraid of Ren? He’s a rabid cur, all impulse and no control.’

‘You let him push you around. That night in the bar.’

‘Ren underestimates me; it is better if I let him. He knows about the suspects, the orders from Captain Snoke. But I’ve never told him about my… off the books work.’

‘You’re weak and pathetic and you kill women to make yourself feel strong.’ Rey wishes she could have delivered that like an accusation instead of a sob.

He advances on her; Rey shrinks back. ‘I am not weak. I am patient.’ His voice is so, so cold. Rey shudders. ‘I waited years to learn how to kill properly. How to destroy people completely. And you must have felt the rush. The power. Watching the blood flow. You hit Plutt with a hammer, correct?’

Tears are flowing freely from Rey’s eyes now. She nods jerkily.

‘And it didn’t feel like strength?’

‘It made me sick,’ she manages.

He leans closer, narrowing his eyes as he considers, judges. ‘Is that all?’

No, it isn’t. She felt relieved and desperate, like throwing up and sobbing. She felt dirty inside in a way nothing else, not even the abuse, had made her feel. But yes, beneath it there was a creeping elation. Just for a moment, she had felt what Hux feels.

He nods. He sees it in her.

‘I suppose that’s an answer. I wondered if you’d be a good partner,’ he says conversationally. ‘But no, I see it now. Why you were drawn to Ren. You hate yourself as much as he does. And I’m already stuck with one Ren; I have no need for two.’ He straightens. ‘Disappointing. I’ll get you that glass of water now so feel free to scream yourself hoarse. But when I come back, I’m bringing my knives.’


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The finale!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've not checked out the fic playlist, I'd love it if you did - link [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2pL1Uap7pGk0vht84uR0Mt?si=DzlRvYD8ScGtiEbdtsnD8g)

Rey knows several things for certain as Hux walks out of the room: that he intends to hurt her, and he is going to enjoy it. The reality of it crashes into her, showing her starkly how safe she’s been with Kylo all this time, how badly she misunderstood.

There isn’t time for that now. Rey has become very good at compartmentalising.

She frantically looks around to take in her surroundings. Based on Hux’s last comment, there’s no one to hear her yell anywhere nearby. The table has the gun. She might be able to get to it. Rey wonders if he’s arrogant enough to have left it loaded.

There’s a series of hooks like for keys on the back of the door, but they don’t hold keys. Instead there’s a flash of purple hair, a necklace like Rose’s... Souvenirs, right. Don’t think about that.

She’s not sure what this is she’s been tied to – maybe a kitchen chair? She’s mostly upright and her hands are handcuffed behind her. Hux used his police-issue cuffs on her in front of Rose, and why would he bother to change them? It’s almost certainly the same pair. Her feet are zip-tied to the chair legs. She doesn’t have a lot of range of motion but she can twist a bit. And when she tries to stand she can just about manage it – so the chair isn’t bolted to the floor.

There are blood stains on the carpet. Don’t think about that, either.

So: she’s in handcuffs. They put her in them when she was fourteen, when Unkar Plutt was newly dead and his cronies were saying she should be tried as an adult. They had almost been too big for her underfed wrists, even on the tightest setting.

Sliding her hands around now, she wraps one hand around the wrist and tightens. The metal moves.

Yes, it’s the same kind. Good. Ratchets can be shimmed.

What to use as a tool? She has only the sequin dress to work with – no jewellery, she can’t reach her shoes. She tries to move the chair but she’s tied a bit too tightly to shuffle it over to the table. Hux must have worked it out. She wonders if he killed them all here. All but Finn.

Her vision blurs a moment and she shakes her head, furious – she can’t do this if she loses herself now and she is _going_ to survive.

At the very least, if this is how she dies she’s going to hurt Hux for what he’s done. She’ll show up in the morgue with marks all over her and Kylo will know that she fought before he took her away from him.

Kylo. Will he miss her? Will he think she got what she deserved for leaving him that way?

The self-hatred and pity are rising again and there isn’t time for this, she has to think, she has to…

There on the floor is her salvation: a black bobby pin. It’s all but blending into the carpet, easy to miss unless you’re frantically looking for anything to give you the edge.

Rey judges the distance, moves as quickly as she can even though it’s barely a millimetre at a time but she knows she can reach it, if she can just –

The door starts to open and Rey flings caution aside, rocks herself as hard as she can and falls to the floor. She lands hard on her side and rolls back as best she can and she’s hurt herself, can barely feel her shoulder but it’s all right because nothing’s broken and the bobby pin is in her hand!

Hux scoffs at her when he enters the room. True to his word, he’s brought a plastic cup of water, complete with straw, on a tray with an array of knives. ‘Good grief, is this your pitiful attempt to escape?’ He places the tray down on that same table while Rey frantically manoeuvres her hands into what she thinks are the right positions.

‘You had to know I’d try.’

Hux sighs and walks behind her to right the chair; she holds her hands very, very still, doing her best to conceal the pin.

He doesn’t seem to notice.

‘I knew you had some fight in you,’ he says, crossing back to his knives, carefully selecting a thin, sharp blade. ‘But not enough.’

‘Did Finn fight?’ She doesn’t want to know. She has to know.

Hux looks shifty all of sudden. ‘I’m a little embarrassed about that. I went there looking for you but your friend got rather over protective and, well, I acted more impulsively than I usually would. You don’t need to worry, though,’ he says. ‘I won’t make that mistake with you.’ Then he’s tracing the knife in his hand lightly across her collarbone, slicing through the dress with ease so the shoulder drops, exposing her chest, almost the entirety of one breast. ‘This dress is awful.’

Rey stares up at him. She just needs another moment.

She does not feel the blade when he cuts her – the rush of heat and pain comes after and that is when she knows. She cries out and Hux shushes her like a child.

‘Does it hurt that much?’ he asks gently.

‘Yes,’ Rey says. But she’s lying. That was a sob of relief.

Hux strokes the knife across her collarbone again. When Rey judges it as just far enough away from her throat, she lashes out with her still-cuffed wrist, catching Hux on the side of the head with the metal. He makes a huffing _ooft_ sound as the breath goes out of him and he crashes towards the door.

Rey’s feet are still tied to the chair legs but her hands are free and she can stand, launch herself towards the table. Hux lashes out with a foot and manages to kick her but it just makes her stumble into the table which catches her. She, the table and the contents all go crashing to the ground.

‘You bitch!’ he’s shouting, blood on his hands.

‘Yes,’ Rey says as he turns around. She’s on the floor in a pile of his things, knives all around her, but his gun is in her hand.

Hux sneers at her. ‘Have you ever even handled—’ but Rey has found the safety by then and shoots him twice in the chest without hesitating.

The two of them look at each other a moment, stunned. Hux lurches forward once more, either another attack or just some reflexive movement. Rey pulls the trigger again, not waiting to find out which.

Hux laughs, a gurgling sound that escapes his mouth along with his blood. ‘I was wrong. You should have been… mine…’ He laughs again then slumps silent to the ground covered in his own blood and spit.

Rey has seen horror films. She waits long enough to make damn sure he’s dead before she drops the gun in favour of a knife to cut herself free.

When she leaves, she takes Kylo’s jacket, the one comfort she has, to cover the worst of the bloodstains.

She leaves Hux’s knives but takes his gun. God only knows what might happen between here and home.

It turns out this building is in a part of the city she knows – the old industrial district. Dozen of derelict warehouses, no neighbours. She’s not a million miles from her neighbourhood – just about four or five. It’s a long walk home.

Maybe she should have taken Hux’s wallet for a taxi. Or tried to use Kylo’s phone to order an Uber. No one stops to give her a ride. Why would they? She’s still dressed like a crazy person and now she’s covered in blood again, too. But if Finn’s blood made her dirty, Hux’s has washed her clean.

Rey walks though the street of Jakku in Finn’s dress, Jyn’s shoes, Kylo’s jacket, feeling oddly and completely like herself.

Hux lied. Finn died because of him, not her. And she made him pay, like she made Plutt pay. She can live with that.

She’s never been this alive before.

It is dawn when Rey reaches her apartment.

Kylo is still there. He destroyed half her wall trying to free himself but obviously never managed to get the cuffs off as his arm dangles from the cuff point. He’s slumped half against the wall, half on the floor.

Rey reaches into the pocket of his jacket around her shoulders and pulls out the key. Kylo rouses as she unlocks it, opens his dark eyes to look up at her.

She wants to say something to him but she doesn’t know what. It’s so quiet in her head. She slumps to the floor next to him, catching his recently-freed arm to draw it around her, massaging it a little to help bring the feeling back. For the first time, she wants to wrap herself up in him completely.

Kylo doesn’t speak for a very long time. At last he says, ‘What happened?’ She expected fury but instead he seems only exhausted where she is awake.

Rey closes her eyes. ‘It was Hux.’

Long silence. Then, ‘I fucking knew it.’

She almost wants to smile, the relief of it all bubbling over, but her jaw is starting to swell where she smacked it into the table. ‘Condition corrected,’ she says simply.

Kylo’s arm tightens around her. ‘I wanted to do that for you.’

‘I know,’ Rey replies. ‘But I had to do it for myself.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All finished, just in time for TROS! Thank you so much to you lovely readers. If you liked it or want to ask questions please let me know!


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